


The Lights Are On

by TetrodotoxinB



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AIDS, Angst, But also pottery so it's really a grab bag, Caretaking, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, LGBT issues, M/M, Magic, Magical enthrallment, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Sex, Slow-ish burn, injuries, the AIDS crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: In a moment, everything changes when Steve's consciousness is stripped from his body. The team is left to scramble for a cure and care for Steve's still-living body. But as days turn to weeks, and then to months, Sam and Bucky are forced to confront the reality that hope may be lost. Together they grieve and begin to relearn how to live and even how to love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



> This was patiently beta'd by [ICouldDoThisAllDay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday) and [LayersofSilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/layersofsilence/pseuds/layersofsilence). There undoubtedly remain mistakes and I claim them all. 
> 
> Thanks also go to my four small children who put up with me typing all the time to get this done but who are probably also the reason I missed some of the aforementioned typos. :)
> 
> Created for Fandom Trumps Hate 2018.

Steve managed to escape Thor's grasp and sling Bucky off of him in one motion. Bucky’s shoulder slammed into Sam’s stomach as he lurched off the stretcher where he had been restraining Steve, and Sam went careening over. Pain spiked in Sam’s gut, making him momentarily dizzy, but he scrambled to his feet, glad that at least he hadn’t hit his head on the metal floor of the Quinjet. Another violent twist from Steve’s body and Bucky had to lean in hard, Thor grasping at Steve’s shoulders to keep him down. 

Sam scrambled for the supplies he needed, forced to reach over and around the melee. Steve must have thought Sam was in range for an attack because even though he was pinned under a whole lot of brawn he still rolled towards the outside edge of the bed, grabbing at Sam. Bucky pressed his opposite shoulder back towards the stretcher, and with a sickening pop, the shoulder went, the rest of Steve following. Steve howled like a wounded animal, but unchecked rage and fierce determination sounded in every growl. Though he wasn’t strong enough to escape, Steve was still strong enough to be dangerous.

Sam tried to ignore the wounded look on Bucky’s face, the look that said that all he could see was that he was hurting Steve like HYDRA had hurt him, as he continued to grab supplies. Even through the primal ferocity, Sam could see the pain that Steve was in. His wounds, while probably not life threatening for someone enhanced, had to be excruciating, and holding him down had to hurt that much more. Sam loved saving but hated the hurting that inevitably went with it, and as much of a professional as Sam was, this always got him. But hurting someone that he knew personally, hurting Steve of all people, his best friend — that was enough to make his chest clench and ache.

“Can you pin his arms? I need to put a line in each arm,” Sam called to no one in particular, trying to focus his attention on what needed to be done.

The servos in Tony’s suit and Bucky’s arm both whined as they each took one of Steve’s arms, Thor continuing to hold his shoulders. 

“You good with a moving target?” asked Tony as Steve again jerked violently, nearly pulling out of Tony’s grip. “Because this is about the best you’re gonna get.”

Sam gritted his teeth. There was a pint of blood on the stretcher alone and another pint dripped along the ground from where they’d frog marched him back to the jet. Judging by Steve’s breathlessness and lolling eyes, Sam figured there was yet another somewhere else.

Steve was fighting hard and Sam knew that the piddly little IV catheter wouldn’t be able to hold up to the strain, assuming all the thrashing about didn’t dislodge it first. 

“Change of plans. Thor, move to his legs and hold them still. Tony, Bucky, you two keep doing what you’re doing,” Sam ordered as he went back to the cabinet for what he’d need. 

As Sam unwrapped the packaging to the safety sheers, he shut down any remaining sympathy for Steve. This was a body that was failing and there was a protocol to follow to prevent that. Nothing more, nothing less. Sam took the shears and cut the suit to the knee on both sides, careful not to look at Steve’s face. He ripped open an iodine swab and scrubbed the sides of both legs just below the knee and ignored the pains grunts and keening noises that Steve continued to make.

“Iodine seems a little excessive,” Tony commented flippantly.

Sam ignored him and made eye contact with Thor as a warning before grabbing the IO drill and setting the first line into the head of Steve’s right tibia. Sam moved quickly because it was more humane, not to mention that it was safer in this situation — the hell if he knew what Steve would do in a situation like this, and because he couldn’t give himself time to think about drilling holes into his best friend’s bone and just how much that had to hurt. 

So when Steve bucked and screamed, because that’s what most people did when someone set an IO line without a local first, Sam didn’t pause. Instead, he set the other line as quickly as possible it on the other side, flushed both with saline — leading to another round of bucking and agonized animal noises — and then hooked up the bags of synthetic blood. 

“Flip him,” Sam ordered.

He held onto the lines to make sure they stayed seated, and once Steve was pinned to the bed again, he cut off the entire top of his uniform. A large, deep laceration ran from about C7 through the length of his left trapezius, trailing off an top inch or so into his lat. The wound was oozing blood, slowed from the steady stream of earlier. Sam irrigated it half-heartedly — Steve’s body would sterilize any debris and eventually break it down or reject it, but on principle he felt obligated to make at least a cursory attempt. 

Satisfied, Sam wiped Steve’s back with a gauze pad to dry the area, and opened the stapler. To his right, Tony made a small noise of discomfort and turned his head away. Sam heard the servos in Bucky’s arm whir as he tightened his grip in anticipation. But the staples were, in comparison to the lines, not so big a deal, and Steve grunted and jerked only a bit with each one. Soon they were done, and Sam slapped a large bandage across the whole thing.

They flipped him belly up again and Sam checked Steve’s vitals once more. There were other, smaller, wounds, but Sam decided against any intervention given Steve’s healing factor. He kicked the little stool away from the wall and sat down on it, thinking about the multitude of problems that they faced.

The first problem seemed to be that Sam’s medical care was working a little too well. With at least a pint of blood already back in Steve, his eyes were clearer and he was putting up a much more concerted fight than five minutes ago. 

“Do we have any restraints that’ll hold him?” Sam finally asked.

Tony nodded his head side to side, thinking. “Yeah, I bet we can rig something up to hold him on the bed for the flight. You got him, Barnes?”

Bucky nodded silently, but wouldn’t meet Sam’s eyes when he looked up. His jaw was set and there was a darkness to his face when he looked at Steve. Steve was watching them all, but his expression was devoid of any recognition. Sam shivered, remembering with a frightening clarity Bucky’s early days with them. Glancing up at Bucky, Sam tried to settle his expression into something reassuring and steady. He wasn’t calm — in fact, he felt as fucked up about it all as Bucky looked — but he could fake it for Bucky.

Stark banged around at the back of the jet and returned with what appeared with reinforced tie-down straps. “So these weren’t developed for Steve, but they should be strong enough to hold him.”

Sam nodded and helped strap Steve down to the stretcher. It wasn’t ideal, but Sam doubted that Steve would break any bones struggling. Though after the synthetic blood, plus a fair bit of Ringer’s, Steve was getting pretty combative. All the electrolytes and glucose gave him a jumpstart, and the stretcher whined and crimped where the straps pulled and deformed it.

Thor and Bucky were standing at each end of the bed, ready to restrain Steve again if it became necessary, but Sam shook his head and grabbed a vial of pentobarbital, drawing the entire contents up and pushing it into the IV tubing. Steve began to settle, his eyes losing their clarity again, and Sam went ahead and pushed another 250mL into the unit of RL, just to keep him calm. Having winged it on the sedation — no one really knew what it took to put Steve down — Sam went ahead and hooked up the monitoring equipment. Wouldn’t hurt to be able to tell how Steve was faring at a glance. Then he turned to Bucky and Thor.

“That’s enough to bring down a horse. Should keep him calm for the ride home,” Sam explained. “I need to see how Barton is coming over there with Natasha. Keep an eye on his vitals.”

As it turned out, Clint was doing a fair job with Nat. He’d gotten her ribs wrapped nicely and splinted her arm. Sam was surprised because Clint clearly had also reduced the fracture, something Natasha had apparently managed to tolerate silently. But silent or not, Sam could see the creases on her brow that she kept trying to smooth out and the sweat that made her skin glisten even though the jet was cold enough that he wanted a jacket. 

He patted her knee and grabbed some ibuprofen and morphine from the cabinet. Clint helped her swallow the pills and then carefully rolled up her sleeve on her intact arm, scooting closer to her as Sam prepped the injection. 

“You’re gonna get tired, alright? If you need to go to sleep, don’t fight it,” Sam instructed, rubbing his thumb in gentle circles over the small lump under her skin where the morphine was slowly making its way into her blood. 

In another minute, she had closed her eyes and was leaning hard against Clint. Clint smiled tightly and mouthed “thank you” to Sam. Sam smiled, glad he could actually solve at least one of their problems, and stepped away to toss the needle in the sharps box and everything else in the trash. 

When he sat down, Bucky filled him in on Steve by way of shaking his head and frowning, and Sam sighed. Steve was still struggling, though more slowly and with less coordination. His eyes drifted around, unable to focus on anything for any length of time. 

There were still at least three hours left until they made it back to the Tower. Sam looked over to Bucky, but whatever he was thinking about was from another time and place. Sam couldn’t help him with that. There never was any guarantee that everyone got to go home at the end of the day in this line of work, and anything he could say to Bucky would be trite and no more than wishful thinking. Instead Sam took the opportunity to check Steve’s myriad injuries again, which were healing up nicely. It was about the only thing that had gone as expected the entire day, but he’d take it. 

*****

Bucky helped push the slightly bent stretcher into the medical bay once they landed. Sam was leading and Thor assisted from the other side. The effects of the last of the drugs were wearing off and Steve was having another go at escaping, presumably to kill them all. 

It was gutting to watch Steve, who didn’t appear to recognize his own name or his friends, as he writhed in pain and shrieked like a wounded animal when Sam treated him. Bucky wasn’t sure what was going on, but even so it brought back memories. He couldn’t say for certain what he looked like when he had been freshly wiped, but he remembered the fear and the single-mindedness. He knew the emptiness and violence. The vacancy of Steve’s eyes was like looking in a mirror.

Bucky didn’t want to think that Steve had been wiped, or something anywhere near it. But it was clear that Steve was suffering from something abnormal. He wasn’t himself. It was still too early to know what had happened, but seeing Steve this way made Bucky feel sick. 

Clint had kept his distance, too. Sure, Nat needed his help and by all counts it seemed like he’d done an alright job of patching her up, but Clint was tense, more so than Bucky could ever remember. Bucky saw the same fear in Clint that he felt in himself. They hadn’t ever talked about what it was like not to be you, to be a plaything for someone to use, but Bucky had heard enough about what had happened to Clint to have a pretty good idea of what he was going through when he looked at Steve. 

They deplaned and Bucky listened as Nat bitched behind them, but her stumbling attempts at walking were cut off by a moan as Clint scooped her into his arms. She grumbled out a few profanities in Russian and then quieted in his hold. 

Bruce, Dr. Cho, and a team of nurses and other doctors met them at the door, swarming the stretcher first and then Clint as he walked through the door. 

Bucky kept the majority of his focus on Steve, while also keeping careful tabs everyone else in the room. He let himself be pushed to the back of the room while the team converged. Someone slipped something into the line in Steve’s right leg and he began to settle after a minute or so. Bruce and Tony got another bed ready, one which was clearly sturdier and made to restrain someone who could curl a flying helicopter. Bucky tried not to look at the restraints.

They waited several minutes — Bucky’s gut twisting and mind spinning, trying to figure out what had happened — until Steve was glassy-eyed and only weakly pulling at his restraints, before they called him over. At some point between his separation from Steve and now, Steve had pissed himself. Bucky couldn’t care less about the piss itself — they’d both seen a lot worse. But Steve, even before the serum, even when he had pneumonia and the flu together, he was too proud for something like that. He’d die trying to get to the piss pot before wetting himself. Bucky knew because it had been a source of multiple arguments. Seeing Steve so far gone that he couldn’t even make sense of basic bodily functions scared Bucky a whole helluva lot more than he wanted to admit. 

But Steve needed to be cleaned up, and as he had long ago learned, Steve-lifting was a team sport. Bucky checked his concern and focused on the mission at hand. Carefully, he and Thor rolled him to his front, a feat made easier since a nurse had pulled the line from Steve’s left leg. Then the nurses cut the rest of his clothes away, cleaned him, and stripped the soiled linens off the bed. When that was done, Bruce and Helen pulled out the now superfluous staples in his back. It was quick work with minimal distress on Steve’s part, but it was all Bucky could do to keep focused on the here and now. 

The team was efficient and careful, but then HYDRA’s techs always had been, too. No one had set out to cause him pain with the procedures, it was just a side effect. Impersonal. Cold. Devoid of humanity. Bucky had to remind himself again and again that the hands holding Steve down were for healing, not for hurting. But in medicine sometimes hurting came with the healing, and it was easy to forget what they were doing and why. 

They rolled Steve onto his back again and then lifted him with the sheets to the new bed. The restraints weren’t anything fancy — just wrists, ankles, and chest. The cuffs were magnetic, built to handle someone like a slightly sedated super-soldier. Bucky could tell with a glance that Steve would be hard pressed to get out of them. He knew from experience. 

Steve safely secured, Thor and Bucky were again brushed away and this time a curtain was pulled around the bay, leaving Bucky only what he could hear and smell to know what was happening. He listened intently, the sounds from the bay his only way to make sure that Steve was safe. For Bucky, though, it wasn’t enough, and he stood there, his panic well contained after decades of practice, but present all the same.

Murmured instructions, most of which meant nothing to Bucky, was all he heard at first. But soon there was the sound of tearing packaging and then a small grunt of annoyance from Steve. The tearing of packaging repeated and then the restraints snapped taut, the bedframe shaking, and someone gently said, “Try to breathe, Captain. We’re almost done. I know it’s unpleasant.” 

Bucky’s hands clenched behind his back and he breathed slowly through his nose. By the time the curtain was pulled back, the physical manifestations of his panic were under control. His mind, however, screamed at him to check on Steve, to confirm his well-being. Nothing that they had done in the last five minutes had sounded as awful as the lines Sam had put in on the jet, but Bucky wouldn’t be able to get over his concern until he had seen Steve for himself. 

Sam, who had assisted Bruce and the nurses, waved at Bucky to come over, as he stripped off his gloves. Bucky closed the distance in six steps. The other line in his leg was gone, replaced by an IV in his forearm which was well bandaged to prevent him from pulling it. A catheter bag hung at the side of the bed, but beyond that and new monitoring leads, there seemed nothing novel about the situation. Bucky relaxed minutely and made his way to the head of the bed.

“Hey, Steve. Can you hear me? It’s Bucky.”

Steve’s head rolled towards the sound of Bucky’s voice, but it took his eyes a moment to focus in on the source. When they did, Bucky’s hope crumbled. Steve began pulling at the restraints and thrashing, his hands grasping at air as he struggled with his whole body in Bucky’s direction looking nothing short of murderous. Bucky touched Steve’s cheek in the hopes that it might help, though that was really unexpected at this point, and only barely escaped a surprisingly fast and lunging attempt to bite off a finger. 

He drew in a sharp breath, his mouth tightly closed, and then stepped back to watch Steve from a little farther away. The fears that he hadn’t dared entertain — that Steve really didn’t recognize them, that Steve wasn’t really calling the shots in there anymore — all resurfaced and this time he couldn’t tamp it back down.

Sam moved beside him and his hand settled on Bucky’s shoulder. “Come on. They’ve got a bunch of scans to run, see if they can’t figure out what’s going on. We can’t be do anything for him right now anyway.”

Bucky nodded, staring at Steve with a twisting pain in his chest and gut that he couldn’t identify, before turning and following Sam back to their quarters in search of a shower, food, and rest. 

*****

Several hours, two showers, two large pizzas, and a change of clothes later Sam and Bucky met the rest of the team in the corridor outside the medical bay. Bruce, Dr. Cho, Thor, Tony, Clint, a very sleepy looking Nat, and Stephen Fucking Strange were standing together in the hall. Bucky stepped into the hall beside him, bristling at Strange’s presence. Sam understood Bucky’s hesitation. In their line of work, hell, in their day-to-day lives, trust was earned, not given. Whatever reason Strange had to be there, Sam wasn’t all that enthused about it if he was being honest. Strange was an acquaintance — abrupt, cavalier, and abrasive — but otherwise an unknown quantity.

“Now that you’re all here, I suppose you could tell me what transpired,” Strange stated. 

“Uh, I didn’t think this guy was doing brain medicine or whatever anymore. Do we not have people on staff for that?” Clint asked, rubbing the back of his neck and looking at the other Avengers but not at Strange.

Strange snorted and his lips turned up around the edges. “I don’t do ‘brain medicine or whatever’ anymore. I do, however, practice the mystic arts. When your neurologists were unable to find a defect, or in fact anything extraordinary at all, Dr. Banner thought we might explore the possibility of a more supernatural explanation. As I am conveniently located in Manhattan it was no trouble to come down. Now, if we have sated your interest in my presence, I was hoping someone might be able to tell me about the events leading up to today’s predicament,” he concluded. 

“Don’t you need to examine him first?” Sam asked.

Strange shook his head. “I’m more interested in the events that preceded his current state.”

Sam looked at Bucky, who seemed to be fighting the urge to pull in on himself while simultaneously coiling up to deck Strange, but it was Bucky who ultimately answered the question.

“We were clearing the lower levels of the base, me and Steve on the northern side, Nat and Clint on the southern. Nat found the room we were looking for first so we headed to her location to provide back-up while she set up the satellite up-link with their server. Clint was covering the southwest stairwell; we approached from the northeast. HYDRA reinforcements came through both stairwells at the same time. Steve seemed to have the situation well in hand, and he told me to go backup Clint since his location was closer to the server room and therefore more immediately vulnerable for Nat. 

“The next thing I knew, Steve was leading a group of them down the corridor towards our position. We’d been pushed back to just outside the server room by this point. At first we didn’t know what to think, so we ignored him. If it weren’t for Nat, it could have gone a lot worse. She came out of the server room in time to see his approach and slow him down. He wasn’t pulling any punches, though, and no matter what we said or did he wouldn’t stop. It was like he didn’t recognize any of us.

“By the time Clint and I finished up the HYDRA goons, Nat was crumpled up against the wall and Steve was rounding on her again. She managed to get two taser disks into him, which slowed him down enough that I managed to get him to the ground and pin him. After that, we brought him back to the jet and then here,” Bucky concluded grimly.

Strange nodded. “But you saw nothing to indicate what happened that might cause him to turn on you?”

Bucky shook his head and Strange nodded. “Dr. Banner says that Captain Rogers is non-verbal, non-compliant, and apparently very determined to fight you. Is that correct?”

Everyone in the hallway nodded and Clint gestured to Natasha. “He’d have killed her if Bucky hadn’t stopped him.”

Strange’s mouth pulled down into a grim line. “And you said he was injured?”

Bruce shrugged. “Just a large laceration. It’s already healed. There were a few minor injuries, but those were gone by the time they landed. Sam, do you have anything to add?”

Sam shook his head. “Like Bruce said, he had several minor injuries. They’d need stitches on someone normal, but on Steve it wasn’t worth the effort. Only the laceration on his back was a danger. I stapled it en route and pushed two units of synthetic blood and then two units Ringer’s. He was back in fighting shape after only about a half an hour and we had to sedate him.”

“Did you notice anything in the wound?” Strange asked.

“Nah, it was pretty clean, maybe made by a knife. Nothing in it that I saw,” Sam replied.

Strange nodded. “Well, I’d like to examine him now, if that’s all right.”

Strange looked directly at Bucky at that part, waiting even after Bruce’s assent for Bucky to nod. Sam wondered what Strange could see in them, what he could tell, that he sought out Bucky’s permission above all others. Whatever it was Sam was glad because any softness that Bucky had learned to carry in the last few months seemed to have dissipated. He had shifted his posture ever so slightly — knees slightly bent, weight centered and low, shoulders down and back. He wasn’t tense in a physical sense, but Sam could see the way that Bucky had settled his body, like a fighter who had just stepped into the ring and was waiting to decide if he was on the offensive or defensive. 

Clint and Nat didn’t join them when they followed Strange back into the medical bay. Sam figured that Clint had taken her back to her quarters to rest again. He’d looked over her chart after the other doctors had seen her. She had two cracked ribs, a broken ulna that couldn’t be casted for another few days, several pulled muscles, significant bruising where she’d hit the wall, and a mild concussion. It was nothing to worry about, but enough that she was sent off for cognitive rest in low light for a couple of days while the headache and nausea abated.

Strange walked with obvious interest on his face, but he seemed conscious of the way he moved around the rest of the team and personnel in the area. He paused next to the bed and watched for nearly a minute. Sam kept expecting him to do something, but he just stood there staring. It was weird, which seemed only fitting really, but it also made him mad for a reason he couldn’t quite identify. Bucky seemed perturbed as well, glancing at Sam and the others.

Tony shifted and stared at Strange, somehow getting his attention with his gaze alone. Strange looked up at him expectantly.

“Did you need something, Mr. Stark?” he inquired.

Tony paused a moment before shaking his head. “No, no. I’m just interested in what you’re accomplishing — specifically — by standing there and not doing anything.”

“Ah, yes. I had an idea. I was astral projecting so that I could take a peek at a book back at the Sanctum Sanctorum. I thought it might be of help. At any rate, I think I read what I needed to,” he stated, looking back down at Steve. 

His hands shook as he hovered them over Steve. The air began to glow gold with symbols and circles of light, and sparks flew over Steve’s chest. Sam watched the paths of the sparks, but there were no scorch marks where they landed, no sign that they had ever been. 

After a few seconds, Steve’s eyes flew open, the glassiness gone, and he gasped loudly, his chest heaving. A moment later, his body collapsed limply on the bed and all the monitors in the bay began to blare loudly. 

“Code Blue,” JARVIS announced over the din.

Sam leapt onto the bed and started CPR while Bruce grabbed a crash cart. Medical personnel scrambled around and between the remaining Avengers, pushing them out of the way and gathering about the bed. Latex snapped beside him as a nurse tied a tourniquet and set another IV. Another nurse came around the head of the bed and intubated Steve.

Peripherally, Sam was aware of Strange waving his hands, drawing more glowing symbols in the air. Yet another nurse pushed Strange out of the way and he tolerated it for a moment, until he suddenly shoved her back and slammed his palm onto Steve’s forehead, the symbols in the air suddenly gone. In an instant, Steve’s vitals returned to normal and before Sam could get off the bed Steve managed to snag him around the calves where he knelt over Steve’s torso. 

Bucky leapt up behind Sam and pried Steve’s hands off, giving Sam a chance to escape. Steve, apparently no longer sedated, thrashed and grasped at whoever made the poor choice to get anywhere near him. Sam’s calves hurt and he fully expected to have bruises for a couple of weeks. 

“What the fuck happened there?” Bucky growled at Strange as soon as Sam had indicated that he was alright. 

Strange’s eyes were wide with surprise, but he quickly schooled it. “I was testing the strength of his connection to the object he is tied to.”

Bucky nodded in the least agreeable way possible. “And?”

“And it appears that I cannot sever the connection nor can I restore him to his body without the object in question,” Strange replied.

“Are we glossing over the part where you killed him?” Tony asked incredulously.

Strange had the audacity to look like he was considering the assertion and, given that Sam had just performed CPR on his closest friend, it made him somewhat inclined to punch the wizard, or whatever he called himself. 

“I had to test the connection. It was the only way. Besides, it was very temporary,” he finally answered.

Bucky’s hand went to his hip where Sam knew a knife was hidden, and for all the he wanted to punch Strange he didn’t actually want Bucky to knife him right there. In the interest of not patching up yet another person today, Sam put a firm hand on Bucky’s shoulder, reeling him back in. 

“Easy, Bucky,” Sam admonished quietly.

Bucky’s hand hovered over the concealed knife but made no move to grab it. Sam momentarily reconsidered his initial evaluation of Strange’s apparent care for Bucky’s emotions, but was then blindsided again when Strange added, “I’m sorry for the alarm. I should have warned you that this was a possibility. I assure you he was never in any real danger.”

Sam felt the coiled tension in Bucky’s shoulder slowly relax. He loosened his grip and took a deep breath. With Bucky not a current threat and Steve clearly just as fine as he could be, the reality of what just happened abruptly caught up with Sam as he surveyed the scene before him. 

As they hadn’t been able to restrain him, Steve’s head was still jerking whenever anyone tried to touch the tube still in his mouth. There was a rapidly purpling mark on Steve’s chest where Sam had started compressions. One particularly brave nurse was holding a cotton swab to his arm where the most recent IV had already been removed before it could be connected. 

Sam had worked on plenty of guys in shitty situations, most of them in agonizing pain, a fair amount of them dying. It never got easier, but the few times that he’d worked on a friend had been the worst. Emergency medicine was painful, terrifying, and at times as traumatic as the injury itself. Just thinking about it, he felt his own heart thundering too loud in his chest, the sickening feeling when it beat so hard that he felt like he was going to be sick, like his ribs were constricting his heart enough that it might kill him. Nausea washed over him and he bit it back. He’d done two tours and not been sick a single time over a patient. This was hardly as horrifying as war. And yet. 

And yet it was just as terrifying as war. It was Riley. It was all the little pieces of Riley that he couldn’t put back together rushing up at him in technicolor clarity. It was the blood that just sank into the sand while Sam watched from his knees on the ground next to what was left of him. The tacky quality of it on his bare fingers. He’d never noticed it before, the gloves always a barrier between Sam and that reality, but here he knelt with this disfigured corpse that wore Riley’s tags and it coated his fingers and soaked into the knees of his ABUs and it stained his skin in a way that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to wash away.

He knew he was crying. For all they had to be strong, they all cried when they lost their own, no one pretended otherwise. The only surprise was when a calloused hand wiped his cheeks and then pulled him close. For a moment, Sam almost thought it was Riley again, but the body he leaned against was so warm, warmer than any human had the right to be. A breath later and Sam realized it was Bucky, reality slamming into and over him like an avalanche.

He pulled back and looked around. They were alone together in a corridor. “What-”

“You checked out on me. I thought you needed to get out of there, so I told them I was having trouble and herded you away. Everyone’s in there with Steve right now though. He’s okay,” Bucky assured him.

Fuck. Steve. Sam nearly threw up again, the nauseating recollection of the IO drill on the jet and the awful crunch of Steve’s sternum under his hands. He staggered back against the wall and slumped to the floor. Bucky sat beside him, touching from shoulder to knee. 

“How long have we been out here?” he finally asked, his throat scratchy.

“‘Bout five minutes,” Bucky answered. 

Sam nodded, but when he didn’t say anything Bucky spoke again. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Sam answered with a dry laugh. He paused and then did it anyway because not talking about it never helped anyone. “Riley, my wingman. He was my partner. We were quiet about it because of DADT, but I think most everyone knew. He died over there — RPG. Couldn’t save him.”

Sam fell silent and beside him he felt Bucky nod. “And working on Steve…” he said trailing off.

“Yeah,” Sam answered.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said quietly.

Sam nodded and bit his lip, tipping his head back against the wall. “We should probably get back in there,” Sam said.

Bucky shrugged. “They’ll tell us if they need us. Someone can always fill us in later.”

“I know,” Sam agreed. “Come on.” 

Sam needed to be there. Bucky nodded, understanding without explanation. They made their way to their feet, and walked back in to join the others.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t the weirdest thing Bucky had ever done — HYDRA dabbled in all kinds of occult shit — but he had to admit that walking through a glowing portal in a sorcerer’s living room made at least the top five, maybe even top three. On the other hand, it was also the handiest damn thing. No waiting to get to the drop point for endless hours in the back of a cold jet with no toilet. No arriving hungry and already tired. 

Also, this whole magic thing was extraordinary convenient since Strange could apparently just follow the invisible magic tether that connected Steve to whatever the hell was controlling him on the other end. It was less convenient for Bucky’s nerves. He was walking blind into a situation that promised to be at least moderately well defended, and Steve’s future and wellbeing rode on their dumb luck and success. He stepped out into the empty room behind Thor. It was early morning, judging by the light from the window, so Bucky guessed that they had to be in Europe or Central Africa. The fact that they were in a dank stone castle said Europe, which didn’t inspire any hope of it being something other than a HYDRA base. 

The away team was small this time — Bucky, Sam, Clint, Thor, and Strange. 

“The object is in the building. Follow me,” Strange said as the portal collapsed behind them. 

They fell in around him, guns, bow, and hammer at the ready, as Strange followed some invisible path. Bucky took point, unwilling to let a civilian lead while he was distracted doing magic. 

The castle was probably hundreds of years old, though Bucky couldn’t be sure how old because it wasn’t like he’d been studying architecture while he was in cryo. Still, it was old enough to belong in a Bela Lugosi film plus a few centuries. 

Their footfalls were quiet, except for the occasional squeak of their rubber-soled boots against the damp stone floors. The architecture didn’t lend itself to surveillance equipment, but nonetheless cameras were bolted into the stone and electrical wiring ran where the crown moulding had clearly been torn down. The gadget Stark gave them to loop the cameras upon approach was nifty and would buy them valuable time to search, but Bucky knew that it was only a matter of time before someone caught on that their equipment was glitching. 

Strange motioned towards a winding set of stone stairs and Bucky took point. When he was halfway down, footsteps sounded. He held up a fist and stopped to listen. It was one person and they were light on their feet, but moving quickly in their direction. Bucky motioned for everyone to go back up the stairs and then down the hall a ways. He waited around the corner, hoping that the team might remain unnoticed if the person wasn’t too observant, but as luck would have it he turned right into Bucky, the red HYDRA insignia obvious against the black of his uniform. 

Bucky frowned as he clapped a hand over the interloper’s mouth, stifling his incipient cry of alarm. He tightened his grip on the young man’s face and used it to snap his neck, quietly laying him on the stone floor. It was unfortunate, but only just. People chose to join HYDRA, they chose how they wanted to lead their lives. If killing a few, or even all of them, was what it took to get Steve back, then Bucky had no qualms about doing it. 

He waved to the others who hurried quietly down the hall to the stairwell again, carefully stepping around and over the body. By time they made it to the bottom and out into the next hall, time was of the essence. The body of the unfortunate guard would be discovered in short order and then the whole facility would be buzzing with personnel. Bucky lead them along at a slow jog down the corridor. 

Right before they arrived at the end of the hall Strange whispered, “Wait.” 

Bucky drew up short and turned to see Strange hovering his hand over a heavy wooden door.

“It’s in here,” he declared.

Bucky tried the knob and found that it was locked. He glanced around the hall and then ripped the knob clean out of the door with his left hand. The knob came off, but keeper was still coiled out into the door jam, holding the door shut. It sprang free easily enough with his knife, and he peeked inside. Immediately, he ducked back out into the hallway under a hail of gunfire.

“People inside,” he observed with a nod towards the room.

“Oh, you don’t say,” Sam retorted. 

Bucky rolled his eyes and grabbed the hinges of the door. With a twist of his wrist, the hinge-pins came out one by one, and a hard front kick sent it hurtling into the room. The gunfire stopped and the small team rushed through the door. Thor threw several of the uniformed men into walls, putting an immediate end to their resistance, and Strange did a lot of hand-waving that seemed effective given the damage he inflicted. Bucky and Sam popped off a few rounds into several others, leaving alive only two men who weren’t wearing uniforms.

“What shall we do with this pair?” Thor asked, flipping the door off of one of the men, and grabbing the other as he tried to back into a corner.

“Wait for now. We need to find the object,” Bucky answered. He turned to Strange. “Do you have it?”

Thor hefted the two men who were wriggling furiously and Sam zip-tied their hands. Sam and Strange patted them down, discarding guns and electronics. Then Strange stopped and turned around with a yellow gem about the size of a silver dollar in his hand. “I believe I’ve found it.”

Distant shouts echoed in the hall and Bucky turned to Strange. “Open a portal and get us the fuck out of here.”

Bucky grabbed the man who didn’t have the gem and pushed him roughly to his knees. It was quick enough to snap his neck, not to mention quieter and less likely to hasten the footsteps of the coming soldiers, and then nodded to Thor, who shoved the remaining prisoner forward. By the time footsteps sounded behind them they were standing in the Tower’s common room. The spinning circle of sparks zipped closed and the prisoner looked around, his struggling redoubling along with his obvious confusion.

“JARVIS, call the team, including Nat. We need to conduct an interrogation,” Bucky ordered.

“Belay that, JARVIS,” Strange ordered. “I can get what I need more accurately, more quickly, and with less of that tactless torture that passes for interrogation these days.”

Sam looked at Bucky and shook his head, looking annoyed and vaguely disbelieving.

“I just need to grab something from the Sanctum,” Strange said, his speech trailing off as he opened a portal. Bucky peered through it and listened to the sounds of someone haphazardly digging through a cabinet. Several different scraping noises wafted through the portal, followed by what sounded things tumbling around on a wooden shelf. Something else fell to the floor with a concerning crunch. That particular noise was followed by a barely audible, “Shit.” Bucky was beginning to wonder if this guy weren’t at least a half a bubble off when he heard, “Aha!”

“JARVIS-” Bucky began again before Strange got back, but the AI cut him off.

“I have already alerted the team. They are en route to the common area,” JARVIS explained.

“Thanks,” Bucky said, still watching the portal.

Moments later Strange marched triumphantly through the portal holding a book in one hand and a dessicated canary bound to what looked like a broken chunk of obsidian in the other.

“The fuck is that?” Sam asked nodding towards the bird.

“This is the Voice of Truth. You know the old ‘canary in the coal mine’ idea? Well, canaries can tell truths far beyond just that of carbon monoxide levels. The stone will draw the truth from the mind of the person and the canary will speak it,” Strange explained. 

“It’s dead,” Sam observed flatly.

“Yes. It would be rather awful to keep a live bird bound to a chunk of rock,” Strange replied.

Of all the weird and horrible things he’d seen with HYDRA and now this, Bucky wasn’t particularly concerned with a bird tied to a rock. Sam, on the other hand, seemed a little taken aback judging from the way that his eyes went wide and his eyebrows crawled up his forehead. It occurred to to Bucky that Sam’s trepidation could just be that he was unused to weird guys in robes who spoke in inhuman languages and toted around occult objects, which, in terms of things to be cautious about, was pretty reasonable.

Strange carefully set both book and bird on the kitchen table, and Bucky decided that he would get out the Lysol wipes for that later. Magical bird or not, he had done his share of eating terrible food from questionable places long before HYDRA ever got their hands on him. 

The pages of the book sounded heavy as Strange flipped through them.

“Ah, here we are,” he said to himself, beginning to mumble in some incomprehensible language.

While Bucky, Sam, and Thor exchanged glances that were somewhere between concerned and amused, Nat and Clint shuffled their way into the common area, followed by Bruce and Tony.

Clint motioned to the table. “What’s with the-?”

“Man, don’t ask,” Sam said, shaking his head.

“Okay, who’s this guy?” Nat asked instead.

“Strange found the magical object attached to Steve on him. He’s here for questioning,” Bucky explained. “Apparently, that thing does better than regular interrogation.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly a little unsettled.

Clint got her a chair and helped her settle comfortably where she could watch the proceedings. 

“I won’t be telling you bastards anything,” the man suddenly declared in a thick Sokovian accent.

“Actually, you will,” Strange replied offhandedly. “But it won’t be of your own volition, if it’s any consolation.”

The man began to struggle and Thor frowned, tightening his grip around the man’s bicep until he shouted in pain. 

“Stand still,” Thor ordered, sounding more annoyed than anything.

The man stilled and Bucky readjusted his grip on his weapon. Steve aside — and Bucky had put Steve well aside to be able to focus — he felt almost hysterical. Standing around the common room in full tactical gear made him feel like some sort of weirdo who guarded the potted plants the way Clint slept in the ventilation system and guarded his pizza. It was funny in a surrealist kind of way, like the melted Dali clocks, his life bent into something bizarre and horrifying and comical. 

It didn’t help that Steve, with his hard-to-rattle demeanor, wasn’t around to be Bucky’s emotional and situational barometer. Bucky functioned just fine without Steve, and he knew he did, but the change in his operational parameters was jarring.

“We’re ready. Bring him over here,” Strange directed.

The man began to resist again, but Thor simply picked him by his biceps and carried him to Strange. The bird and rock combo was collected from the table and Strange wove a spell in the air before placing it on the man’s chest. The spell moved with the morbid little trinket and physically bound it to the man when Strange let go. The man thrashed in fear, but was ultimately held in place by Thor’s hands.

Then Strange began to chant.

Bucky spoke about eleven languages and had heard hundreds more. Nothing sounded like what was coming out of Strange and Bucky was pretty sure it wasn’t human, at least not originally. The air in the room felt heavier, denser, like it did at very low altitude, maybe even pressurized like in a diving bell, and Bucky checked again that his safety was off. 

Everyone looked on edge and uncomfortable as the air continued to change and then suddenly, everything returned to normal. 

“You can ask him anything. All answers will be truthful, though they may not be complete if you don’t ask the correct question,” Strange said. He closed the book and briefly Bucky caught the hastily scrawled writing on the front: “Cagliostro.”

“What did you do to Cap?” Tony asked from where he leaned against the sofa, his arms crossed over his chest.

The man jerked in Thor’s hold, his neck straining and teeth grinding as he forced his mouth to remain closed against the compulsion. Finally, a lilting, sing-song voice floated through the room.

“Captain America is bound to Von Strucker’s Thrall Stone,” declared the incorporeal voice, the sound seeping out of the air around them, rather than coming from any particular direction.

“How was he bound?” Strange asked.

“His blood was placed on the stone and he fell under the command of the holder of the stone,” sang the twittering voice.

The voice made Bucky uncomfortable. It was like the sound was coming from the air itself, and for all its melody there was also a malevolence in it. He figured since it was theoretically coming out of a dead bird that was probably just part of the magic. Still, he made eye contact with Sam and signalled him to be on alert in case shit hit the fan. 

“How do we undo the magic?” Tony asked.

“I do not know.”

“Fuck,” Sam swore under his breath.

“How was the stone made?” Strange enquired, steering the line of questioning back to something less immediate but probably more useful than simply swearing at the lack of potential for an immediate solution. 

This time the spell took longer to pry the answer out of the non-compliant man. “The sceptre of Loki was used to enchant it,” the demon-bird, as Bucky now thought of it, replied. Its voice was strained, as if drawn forth under great duress, and Bucky figured that it was the manifestation of the man’s reticence. 

“Where is the sceptre now?” Strange asked.

“I do not know.”

That got a “fuck” out of Bucky this time. Even Strange frowned and sighed. 

“I’ve spent considerable time searching for it since SHIELD first lost it. But I believe it to contain an Infinity Stone, and as such its magic is so powerful that it is shielded even from my capabilities,” Strange explained.

“So we have someone here who can’t lie and he’s useless. This is fantastic,” Tony snipped. “Did you bring back anything else? Maybe a glass hammer or a chocolate teapot?”

“Tony,” Nat admonished. “He may not have the answers that we think we want, but there’s a lot of useful information he might not realize that he has. We just need to ask the right questions.”

“Like what?” Tony asked sceptically.

“Let me talk to Strange for a while to get some background and then I can have a go at him. But I need some time to prep,” she replied, her eyes closed and rubbing her temples. 

“So what do we do with Steve in the meantime?” asked Clint.

“How does one control the thrall of the stone?” Strange asked turning back to the man.

“The holder of the stone speaks aloud their wishes and the thrall will obey,” answered the eerie voice.

Bucky immediately held out his hand and Strange handed him the stone. No one commented or moved to take it. It was large for a gem, but still a small thing. It was light in his palm and rough to the touch, not polished or cut.

He didn’t think about what it would mean, for him to have control of Steve. It was too much, too big, too horrifying to consider properly in that moment. The gravity of it all would come later, he knew. For the moment, Bucky simply held the stone, its color reminding him of hard candies like the cheap butterscotches he and Steve ate as a kid. 

“Amber?” Bucky asked after a moment, wondering off-handedly if something like amber could be cut to have facets.

“Citrine, actually,” answered Strange.

“And I just tell him what to do?” Bucky asked again. He immediately thought it was stupid question since he’d already been told as much, but another part of his brain reminded him that some things were worth asking twice.

“Yes,” answered the bird.

“Steve, stop fighting,” Bucky murmured.

“JARVIS, has Steve’s condition changed?” Bruce asked.

“Captain Rogers has ceased struggling against his restraints and relaxed onto the bed,” JARVIS informed the room.

Bucky’s heart stuttered in his chest. The relief that they didn’t have to keep Steve sedated and restrained was overwhelming, but the horror that Steve was little more than a puppet made his gorge rise and he swallowed hard to avoiding being sick on the spot.

“Can he hear me?” Bucky asked.

“I do not know,” sang the bird.

“Is he aware of what’s going on?” Bucky pressed.

Again the ethereal voice replied, “I do not know.”

Bucky folded his hand protectively around the gem and tried to breathe evenly through his frustration and rage. He couldn’t tell which was worse — Steve being trapped but aware of everything going on, or Steve completely gone from his body, nothing of him left but a shell.

“James, go to him. Strange and I will do what we can to find the answers to your questions,” Nat murmured in Russian. 

Bucky nodded. The idea that he could go to Steve and get him the hell out of there, away from the medical equipment and tests, away from the myriad medical personnel who didn’t know and couldn’t understand what was happening, was very appealing. It was the least he could do after not backing him up fast enough.

Without another word, Bucky turned and left the room. It was surreal. After being forced to stop Steve and not knowing if it would end in compliance, restraints, drugs, or something worse, he wondered for the first time if this is what Steve felt when he’d had to try to stop Bucky on the helicarrier. Bucky had hated the look that Steve sometimes wore when he watched Bucky, when he thought Bucky couldn’t see him. For three years Bucky had read that look on Steve’s face as pity, but now he knew better. It was devastation and heartbreak, it was the fear of losing someone by your own hand and the knowing that they couldn’t understand why. All things considered, Bucky preferred it when he thought Steve pitied him.

Bucky was waiting on the elevator, deep into a comparative review of his and Steve’s parallel experiences — compulsory medical treatment, brainwashing, forced combat against allies, an inability to recognize or remember said allies — when Sam jogged up next to him. Bucky’s hand twitched on the trigger guard at the sudden intrusion. 

“Hey,” Sam said as he adjusted his rifle to a more leisurely carry now that he wasn’t running.

“Who’s watching the prisoner?” Bucky asked, already tense again at the possibility of a lapse in security.

Sam shrugged, pretending to have not just indiscreetly assessed Bucky’s body language. “Thor, Strange, Tony, Nat, and Clint. I think Bruce was going to head back to medical after he got something. Anyway, more than enough people, is the point.”

Bucky made a low noise in his throat that was more acknowledgement than agreement. Sam didn’t touch, but he pressed in closer to Bucky’s personal space, more than he knew anyone else would dare.

“Come on. Let’s go change into our civvies before we go back to medical,” Sam urged. “If nothing else we need to put up our weapons.”

Bucky was ready to argue the point that he had lived seventy years in nothing but tactical gear, but Sam was right: there were more guns between the two of them than were strictly necessary in a secured facility. He let Sam push the buttons on the elevator that would take them to the armory and ready room. 

The itch to rush to Steve spiked as the elevator began to go up, rather than down towards Steve. It was an irrational response he knew. As he fought to stamp those feelings down Bucky cynically reminded himself that he made it seventy years alone and brainwashed. Steve could wait another ten minutes.

*****

Sam scrubbed his hands over his face and then leaned back in his seat. He had been sitting in the institutional plastic chair in the medical bay for the last three hours and absolutely nothing had changed. Bruce and Bucky, and later Strange, had tried everything to communicate with Steve to absolutely no effect. No one wanted to say it, especially not to Bucky, but it was becoming obvious to Sam that Steve, or whatever made him Steve, wasn’t in there.

After steeling his resolve and listening to yet another failed attempt at communication, Sam stood and moved to stand beside Bucky. “Bucky,” he said softly, “I think we might need to entertain the notion that Steve can’t interact with us. It’s possible that he’s not conscious.”

If Bucky had fur, Sam thought it would probably be bristling given the way Bucky gripped the bedrail and his shoulders drew up tight. 

When Bucky didn’t speak, Bruce went ahead. “I’m inclined to agree with Sam.”

“As am I,” Strange added in quietly.

Sam waited, giving Bucky a chance to get ahold of himself, and after a few seconds the tension started to ebb. 

“Alright, so what do we do?” he asked, his voice rough like a tin garbage pail being dragged down a gravel road.

“Keep the stone on you. Make sure he eats, sleeps, bathes, exercises, and uses the bathroom at appropriate intervals. We don’t have a lot of exact information on Steve’s physical needs, but I think that keeping him on your schedule, you being the closest person physiologically to him, should keep him healthy while we get this resolved,” Bruce said.

Bucky nodded, his hand closed into a fist over the gem. “When are you going to discharge him?”

Bruce shrugged. “All his injuries are healed. He’s fine to go whenever you are.”

Bucky nodded and Sam felt exhaustion sweep over him in a wave. Steve was leaving medical and coming to their apartment. Bucky would be responsible for Steve, and Sam would be somehow responsible for keeping Bucky from falling apart under the strain of 24/7 caretaking. It didn’t help that Bucky looked like he was already on the edge of collapse.

“Hey, look. We’re all beat. Steve more so than us. He spent five solid hours fighting, plus the mission prep and flight, plus the next six in medical, not counting all the healing he’s done. Let’s take him back to the apartment, get some food in him, and get some shut eye. We can come up with a better plan for how we move forward in the morning,” Sam suggested.

Bucky nodded, his jaw set, but his eyes were wide with the same panicked, searching look of the first month after he’d been recovered. “Alright,” he agreed finally.

Sam patted him on the back and moved to help Bruce. They peeled off leads, disconnected the IV, and pulled the catheter. Bucky had to give Steve little directions here and there — sit up, bend your arm, deep breaths when Bruce gave his lungs a final listen — and then he was up and dressing in the clothes that a nurse had brought in.

It was an ungainly process — all the precision and grace of Steve’s usual form replaced with mechanical movements, some of which were too stilted or abrupt to be effective. After a couple of minutes and a little extra coaxing, Steve was dressed and padding quietly down the hall between Bucky and Sam. 

The lack of conversation with Steve was contagious, and Bucky and Sam ended up just as silent as Steve until they were safely locked away in their apartment. 

“Sit at the table,” Bucky quietly commanded.

Steve complied, dragging the chair roughly across the floor as he pulled it away from the table before flopping down in it, eliciting a pained groan from the wood. Sam grimaced, glad that the chair held up. He’d hate for a broken chair to the ass to land them back in medical so quickly after their escape.

Sam made a triple sized protein shake using milk instead of water, adding in some peanut butter for good measure, and Bucky began assembling a stack of cold cut sandwiches. They presented the meal to Steve and Bucky instructed, “Eat the sandwiches and drink the shake.”

Steve drank the gigantic shake in one long swallow and then proceeded to put away the sandwiches at a rate which must have set a new speed-eating record. 

“Did he chew any of that?” Sam asked Bucky quietly, as though Steve could hear them talking about him like he wasn’t there.

Bucky shook his head. “No, I don’t think he really did. I’m gonna need to fine-tune the instructions.”

“Shit, yeah,” Sam agreed. He didn’t want to say out loud how hard this was shaping up to be, but goddamn, Steve couldn’t do basic shit without explicit directions. Which of course brought to mind explicit directions for shit and Sam was already groaning internally. Sure, he’d been a medic and there’d been shit involved in enough of that, but this was not in the brochure. 

Adult diapers might be on the menu in their near future and Sam was wondering if they could get baby wipes in adult size too (not to mention a case of nitrile gloves), when Bucky softly told Steve to get up and follow him. Sam gathered the dishes and loaded them in the dishwasher, discreetly watching as Bucky led Steve down the hall and into the bathroom. 

Kitchen cleaned up and straightened, Sam made his way down the hall to his room. Leaving the door to the hallway open, Sam could hear the low, soft tones of Bucky’s voice as he walked Steve through hygiene and nightly routines. Suddenly, Sam felt awful about being grossed out and frustrated at the thought of toilet issues. It was small thing, a minor inconvenience at best, and for Steve, Sam wouldn’t hesitate. 

The guilt that welled up at his frustration for his situation, and not for Steve’s, became tinged around the edges with anger and despair. Sam saw it happening in slow-motion — the way his emotions were growing beyond what he could handle, rapidly threatening to overwhelm him — and he sat on the edge of his bed and closed his eyes. 

Sam let the air move in and out through his nose, feeling the way it moved down his throat, feeling his ribs and abdomen expand, feeling his breath push everything out of him except that moment. No anger, no fear, no grief. He stayed sitting on the bed living through his breath until he felt like the world had settled around him, but his eyes stayed closed. He forgave himself his frustration and impatience. He let himself admit that this is hard, would be hard, and that sometimes that would upset him and that was normal and okay. 

When he felt settled, he opened his eyes and immediately felt someone’s presence. He turned to see Bucky leaning against his door jamb, arms crossed, looking at the floor. 

“You alright?” Sam asked quietly. 

Bucky tipped his head to the side like he was considering it, but didn’t look up. Sam of course waited for Bucky to answer, letting the silence stretch into discomfort and awkwardness like the good counselor he was. When Bucky did speak he simply said, “He’s in bed. I ordered him to sleep.”

Sam nodded, glad that that portion of the night was over, but still concerned by Bucky’s demeanor. “Good. But I asked if you were alright.”

Bucky took another breath, seemingly trying to figure it out. 

“I guess.”

“Yeah, you’re selling it here,” Sam said with a half smile. “You wanna talk about it?”

Bucky looked darkly at the floor before lifting his gaze to meet Sam’s eyes. “In the morning?”

Sam nodded. He was tired too and maybe some sleep and space might help having to talk about this shit out loud — both his and Bucky’s shit. “Sure.”

Bucky nodded, looking a little too relieved to be avoiding the conversation. “Alright, well I’m gonna hit the sack. See you in the morning?”

“Yeah, man. Let me know if you need anything, alright?” Sam offered.

Bucky nodded again, the loose hairs that had slipped out of his ponytail falling forward around his face. Sam’s heart clenched at the sight. So many times since they recovered him after the Potomac, when Sam had first found him standing confusedly over Steve’s nearly lifeless body, he had hung his head like this, letting his hair hide him. It was the only protection that Bucky ever seemed to have, like a defiant but terrified child clinging to a long worn safety blanket, even though they know how little protection it actually provided.

With a tight smile, Sam walked around the end of the bed and slowly pulled Bucky into his arms. 

“Hey, we’re gonna get through this together, okay? We’re gonna find the sceptre, even if we have to tear down all of HYDRA to do it, and then we’re gonna figure out how to get him back. I’ve got you. And we’re going to take care of him,” Sam promised.

Bucky nodded against Sam’s shoulder, slowly bringing his arms up to return the gesture, and Sam felt something settle in him. They could do this together. Him and Bucky. And then Steve would be back. He felt it in his bones.


	3. Chapter 3

It was, fortunately or unfortunately — Bucky still wasn’t sure which — getting easier to order Steve around. It had been a week since everything got turned on its head, and while it was different it was still also the same, if not quieter. It hadn’t occurred to Bucky how much of the conversation that Steve had carried. So even though the three of them still hung out, went on runs, hit the gym, and ate dinner together, the times that were normally filled with laughter were suddenly silent more often than not, an emptiness between himself and Sam that had previously been filled with Steve.

The memories of their nascent relationship flared to life like phosphorus — bright in his mind for a moment before burning out again, leaving only the gloom that had been there before. It had taken three years of living and therapy and being himself again to see what was right in front of him the entire time: namely Steve. He’d been unable to do more partly because he didn’t have himself figured out, and partly because he’d ignored all insinuations from Steve.

Sam and Steve had been _something_ for months. Maybe just fuck buddies, maybe more, Bucky wasn’t really sure, but it had taken Sam cornering him and explaining that Bucky was “being a dumb fuck and should just give Steve a chance” for Bucky to realize that not only was Steve interested, but Sam wasn’t the jealous type. He and Sam still weren’t close, Bucky only just willing to try out trusting Sam enough for hugs or small touches here and there, but that had been, and maybe still was, building. 

In any case, Sam’s lack of jealousy turned out to be great. Because even though Bucky was having some trouble working up the emotional energy needed to have a full-on relationship, the sex certainly didn’t have to wait. Steve was a fantastic lay, and that wasn’t just seventy-something years of enforced abstinence talking. There was — had been — chemistry there, and they went off like fireworks when they finally came together. But even thinking about those moments wasn’t enough to get Bucky anywhere. 

In the last week, Bucky hadn’t had the desire, physical or otherwise, to even get himself off, let alone miss the sex with Steve. Everything, all his energy, went to Steve and his basic needs. Bucky felt like it was comparable to a high speed chase twenty-fours a day — constantly at the wheel and on alert. Clint had called Steve a “meat puppet,” saying that Bucky was pulling strings all day long. And while he wasn’t wrong — hell he knew better than most — Bucky also didn’t think the description, however apt, was worth repeating. He didn’t want to admit that it hit a little too close to home. 

The first couple of days had been the roughest — toileting being a huge issue at first since they couldn’t just order him to go to the bathroom when he needed to. The first day had three impromptu showers. The second day only had one. After that they had developed a routine that worked.

Sam had been a big part of that. He’d helped Bucky set alarms on his phone so that he could make sure to get Steve on a regular schedule without Bucky checking the clock every thirty seconds. That had been a great relief.

But once they were out of triage mode, the daily stress of their situation began stirring up shit that Bucky would have rather left in the past. Memories that he hadn’t even been aware of cropped up from the slightest stimulus. 

The first time that it happened was when Sam was helping wash Steve’s hands more thoroughly than Steve had done. “Oh, hey wow, is this water not too cold for you?” Sam had asked, not expecting an answer. And suddenly Bucky was naked in a tiled room while someone hosed blood and mud off of him. He was wracked with shivers from the icy water that poured over him. “Is the water too cold for you?” the soldier jeered in Russian. 

Bucky had blinked that time to see Sam still toweling off Steve’s hand, but throwing a concerned look his way. Sam didn’t ask and Bucky hadn’t brought it up.

Then there were the unsuccessful attempts to get Steve to pee while standing. His aim was good, but there was some fundamental disconnect for him that continually resulted in some of it getting on the floor. Bucky had gotten Steve straightened up and was wiping up the mess when he remembered being on his hands and knees blindly scrubbing a toilet and the surrounding floor. It was a safehouse, not the base where he was normally kept. He had been temporarily blinded by white phosphorus, the others were just flat out blind, and he had missed the toilet. Lukin had beaten him bloody and then made him clean the floor with his own shirt. It was also his only shirt, and he’d smelled like dried piss for days after. 

That time Bucky came to on the floor in a cold sweat, Sam sitting a few feet away playing Angry Birds and softly telling Bucky about his nieces. Bucky had scrambled up and stumbled to his room, desperate to escape to somewhere safe, somewhere no one could see or touch him. Logically, he knew Sam wasn’t a threat, not even if he wanted to be one, but even so, the thought of someone being around him when he was so vulnerable made every alarm in his head sound at once. From the seclusion of his room he sent Steve to the sofa and then threw himself down on the bed to try and recalibrate.

It was only an hour later, when his phone went off reminding him of Steve’s schedule, that he had to drag himself back to the living room. Sam was sitting next to Steve and reading an email from his sister aloud, and it was then that Bucky realized exactly how good a guy Sam was. No one except Steve had ever treated Bucky with that particular mix of friendly compassion and assumed competence — people were either on high-alert around him, like most of the team, or they beat him until he got it together, like HYDRA. There hadn’t been anything in between. 

He’d smiled and nodded to Sam, who returned the gesture, and Bucky felt some of the tension he’d been carrying abate. Nothing was fixed, but at least Wilson was a stand up kinda guy to be stuck working it out with.

Those two flashbacks, both on the second day, had been the worst, leaving him dissociated and jittery for hours after. But beyond those there were also small snippets of long forgotten shit that popped up almost constantly. Bucky already knew how to cope with those from the early days of his freedom, but just because he could stay functional didn’t mean that he wasn’t perpetually on edge and anxious. 

It was day three when they relocated to the compound upstate. Clint piloted, and Bucky sat in the back with Sam and Steve, trying to breathe through a memory of being thrown in the back of a cargo plane after breaking his goddamn femur when some idiot ran him over with a truck. Newly emancipated from HYDRA, Bruce had given Bucky a pretty thorough once-over. Bucky remembered Bruce looking at his scans and commenting that Bucky had done something to his leg once, but only now, after loading Steve into the jet, did he remember how. 

Bucky knew Sam was counting his breaths — no one breathed that deeply and rhythmically naturally — but it gave Bucky something to focus on and he matched his breaths to Sam’s. It was a few minutes before he felt even remotely settled, but Sam just waited, his breathing strong and steady, not trying to hurry anything along.

Finally, when Bucky started to fidget, a sign that he could focus outside of his mind, Sam started talking. “I know this shit with Steve is making you relive a lot of what happened to you. I-” 

Bucky didn’t even let him finish, his mind long since made up that reliving it was far from the worst part. “It’s not the flashbacks,” he cut in. “It’s… I feel like, with Steve, I mean, with what they did, and what we’re doing, I just...”

Sam shook his head and cut him off. “If you think for a damn minute that you’re doing to Steve what they did to you, you are so fucking wrong I could write a dissertation on that alone. You are everything they are not — gentle, patient, caring. And they did this to him — not you. You are taking care of him while we try to resolve the situation — a situation that they forced us into. And I know you probably don’t believe me when I say that, but you know that if any one of us thought that you weren’t taking good care of Steve, you wouldn’t still be taking care of him.”

Bucky let that sink in for a minute, and try as he might, he couldn’t deny the truth of what Sam was saying. “Yeah, alright,” he agreed.

Sam put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. “We’re gonna get there. Just hang in there with me.”

Bucky swallowed and nodded. Save for the first few hours after everything went sideways and he and Sam had been there for each other, Bucky hadn’t touched or been touched by anyone other than Steve. An arm around him, however brief, settled his swirling thoughts enough for the truth of Sam’s words to sink in. He was doing alright. He just had to hang in there.

*****

And hanging in there what Bucky had been doing, was still doing, as he downed the last of his protein shake, purposely bumping into Sam on his way through the kitchen. “Come on already. Steve and I are ready to go.”

“You and Steve are ready to go because you let Steve consume his breakfast by unhinging his jaw and swallowing it whole like a python, instead of ordering him to eat like a normal person. Don’t fuck with me, Barnes.”

Bucky snorted as he grabbed Steve’s water bottle. He pressed it into Steve’s hand with a soft, “Carry this” and “ Follow me,” and then snagged his own as he sauntered towards the door.

Sam kept up a running commentary to Steve about how Steve really should have Sam’s back as they descended the steps of the compound and headed out into the woods for their morning run. Per their routine, Bucky took point and Sam brought up the rear, Steve safely sandwiched between them. It was the first part of their now daily routine. They would run to the overlook just east of the compound. It was conveniently about halfway through their route, and that’s where they would rest. Sam had immediately decided it was a great place to meditate, and although Bucky couldn’t quite get into it, he did find the silence of the deep woods very calming.

When they returned, they would put Steve on a treadmill for a run that would actually challenge him, and then they would all grab a snack and hit the gym. By the time lunch came around, they were always beat. Showers for all and then an afternoon rest was in order for Steve, whereas Bucky and Sam ended up doing briefings and working on intelligence reports since they were unable to do field work. Most of it fell into one of three categories: “is this HYDRA,” “is this a homegrown terrorist cell,” or “is this a possible location for the sceptre.” The third category was painfully sparse and always ended in “no.”

Later on, after they had called it quits for dinner, they would head back to their suite to watch a movie, play some cards, and maybe listen to an audiobook together or read to Steve from one of the books they had found in his nightstand back at the Tower. 

Bucky knew that Steve couldn’t hear them. It was becoming an unavoidable truth to Bucky. But reading to Steve was like reading to someone in a coma, Sam had told him. They did it because the doctors might be wrong and Steve could hear them — it was magic, after all — and they did it because they needed to remember that Steve was, and remained, more than just Clint’s crudely, though aptly described, “meat puppet.”

When even Bucky started to yawn, they called it a night. Bucky would help Steve with his bedtime hygiene — brushing, flossing, and pajamas — and Sam would tidy the kitchen and common area. Then, they would get Steve situated in his bed. 

It had taken Bucky four nights to finally ask Sam how much clothing and how many blankets Steve needed. Sam had occasionally spent the night with Steve, but Bucky always returned to his own bed after sex, still unable to relax enough to sleep next to someone else. As it turned out, the answers to Bucky’s questions were very little and none, respectively. Anything more resulted in a bed soaked with sweat in the morning and a very dehydrated Steve.

Now, though, they flowed through their nightly routine easily, Bucky having already worked out the commands that got the best results. Once Steve was down, Bucky left his room to finish his own nightly ablutions. 

On the fifth night Bucky stepped out to find Sam waiting in the hall.

“Hey, Barnes, you’re doing a really great job with Steve. Everyone appreciates that,” Sam said quietly. Bucky tensed at the unfinished thought, ready for the “but” that hung unsaid in the air.

Upset but unwilling to show it he let his hair fall forward, looking down at the floor and nodding. He didn’t feel like he was doing great. He felt like shit. Everything felt like shit. Every step of every day felt like a monumental task that took all his focus. He managed a lot of the time to be somewhat cavalier about it, but by the end of the day he was, without exception, a mess. Every command given and obeyed was an exercise in walking through the minefield that was also memory lane. 

“But it’s a lot of work,” Sam went on.

Bucky shrugged and looked up. “It’s just talking.”

It was obvious to Bucky that Sam only narrowly avoided rolling his eyes. “Mental work, Bucky. I can tell you’re tired.”

Bucky shrugged again, but didn’t say anything.

“All I’m saying is that if you want a break, let me know. I’ll take care of him for you for an afternoon. You can go do something yourself, relax, take a break, whatever you need. Alright?” 

Bucky nodded, knowing that it was the expected response, but he couldn’t imagine actually taking Sam up on the offer. It had been three years since DC. Three years since he nearly killed Steve and was brought in. Two years since he graduated from daily psychotherapy to biweekly and a year and a half since he moved to weekly talk therapy. It was a year since he’d gone back in the field. Two months since Steve first kissed him. But in none of that time had he ever developed an actual hobby. 

He’d started yoga with Banner, and it felt good in his body and helped clear his mind, but it was more of a necessity than a thing he did for simple enjoyment. Running had been like that, too. It was freeing to run without a direction, a goal, a handler. He could choose left or right, could choose to run long or to cut it short, he could run and run and run until his lungs burned if he wanted and no one would tell him not to. Alternately, he could sleep in and not run for weeks. The choice was his. But it wasn’t a hobby. 

Cooking was about probably as close as he came to having a hobby. Sure he had to eat, and he had to eat a lot compared to everyone but Steve, who seemed to be just as hungry as him, but there was something satisfying about cooking, baking in particular. He could make something sweet or savory, spicy or sour — anything he wanted — and he could delight in its creation as well as its completion. But even with all the joy cooking brought him, the experience was tainted by his need to control his life after so long in HYDRA’s grasp. 

For decades, every aspect of Bucky’s life had been dictated by one handler or another. Cooking let Bucky control what he did with his time, what he chose to cook, how he chose to cook it, and then eat what he wanted to eat. It afforded him control over his life in a way that soothed the constant buzz of helplessness under his skin. But before HYDRA, cooking had never mattered to Bucky. Knowing that his affinity for it stemmed from his trauma rather than just true enjoyment soured the experience, and Bucky never could quite bring himself to call it a “hobby.”

So the idea that he could leave Steve with Sam seemed pointless. What would he do? The compound wasn’t located adjacent to anything other than the Adirondacks, and they already spent a fair amount of time out there. The quiet was nice, but in all honesty he’d gone seventy years without adequate conversation. He wasn’t itching for more silence, even if he didn’t know what to say to Sam. 

Sam patted him on the shoulder and they said their goodnights. Bucky drifted down the hall and into his room. Quickly, he turned off the lights and slid under the covers, the weighted blanket Steve had gotten him a couple of years back a balm against the restless frustration under his skin. He’d had enough therapy to know, if not believe, that personal time was important for stress relief, and so were hobbies, so he wracked his brain accordingly.

But after three years fully in the future, he realized he didn’t really know what he could be doing, especially not alone, as it would inevitably be if Sam had to stay with Steve. He tried to think of what Steve would suggest he do; Steve was always suggesting things, though most of it was boring and/or ridiculous. But Steve’s old suggestions of “take a dance class” and “learn the sitar” didn’t really seem appealing. 

Bucky rolled over and decided that, if it came down to it, he would ask Sam.

*****

Bruce’s request for more blood samples was completely reasonable — after all they were just guessing at Steve’s calorie and activity needs. Asking Sam to draw those samples was also reasonable since the only medic currently on rotation at the Compound was an EMT where Sam was a paramedic with twice as many years experience.

He tossed his phone on the kitchen counter, closed his eyes, and took two deep breaths, rubbing his hands over his short hair. Sufficiently calm for the moment, he opened his eyes and grabbed his phone. Bucky was sitting on the sofa making no effort to hide that he was watching Sam. 

“What is it?” Bucky asked.

“Uh, Bruce needs another blood draw to make sure Steve’s metabolism is still in its normal range.”

Bucky nodded. “We can go now. There won’t be anyone there but us.”

Sam wanted to scream for how perceptive Bucky was, but it wouldn’t fix the problem, wouldn’t change that Sam felt sick at the thought of so much as listening to Steve’s lungs. Sam was built for emergencies — for adrenaline and split-second decisions, for short-term medicine and then wiping his slate clean. He hadn’t been trained to care for someone for days or weeks or, god forbid, months at a time. He didn’t know how to cope with the stress of daily care or the lack of a goal to complete. Compartmentalization got him through the first week, but it took a helluva lot of energy to maintain. By the end of that first week, Sam felt like every single bathroom and food alarm, every single task, every minute of every day was nigh insurmountable. 

Bucky had to see how badly Sam was coping and it grated on him that he couldn’t even keep up appearances. 

“Nah, I’ll just go get the supplies. Bruce wants me to do it in the morning so we can get his fasting levels anyway,” Sam explained.

Bucky nodded without taking his eyes off Sam. The assessing gaze was too much and Sam turned and fled the room to get what they needed for morning.

*****

Bucky had ordered Steve to the sofa and he stood off to the side watching as Sam set up. Sam had spent the rest of the night staying well clear of the plastic caddy that he had brought up from medical. It was obvious to Bucky that Sam did not relish the thought of sticking Steve. Needles had long been a major part of Bucky’s life with HYDRA but these days he didn’t really mind so long as he trusted the person holding them. Even so, Bucky could understand Sam’s reluctance, especially after the ordeal with the IO lines on the jet.

There had been a small hope that Bucky was holding out, that maybe after a good night’s sleep Sam might pull it together, but watching him fumble the wrapping on the supplies ruined the illusion. In another situation, Bucky would take over, let Sam try to decompress from the stress they were both under. But for something like this Bucky couldn’t — he just didn’t have the necessary skills. 

Sam situated himself on the coffee table in front of the sofa and tied the tourniquet around Steve’s bicep, swabbing the crook of his arm. 

“This is gonna pinch,” Sam warned Steve. Bucky could hear the frustration and upset in Sam’s voice, the determination desperation that made him warn Steve when he couldn’t hear. 

He watched as Sam pulled the vacutainer hub out of the torn wrapping and carefully inserted it into the largest vein. The first tube popped into place and filled up without a hitch, but when Sam tried to press the second one in he fumbled, his shaking hands losing his grip on the hub and pushing it farther into Steve’s arm.

“Shit,” Sam swore.

Bucky watched as Sam retracted the needle a little, clearly trying to relocate the vein, but no matter the angle he tried the vacutainer remained stubbornly empty. 

“I lost the vein,” Sam explained as he pulled the needle out.

With one hand he pressed his thumb over the puncture in Steve’s arm. With the other he flicked the cap over the needle and tossed it in the sharps box in the caddy. 

“It happens,” Bucky observed quietly.

“Well, it shouldn’t,” Sam snapped.

Bucky took in the sag of Sam’s shoulders and the way his head bowed forward — every inch of him proclaiming defeat. “In an ideal world, no one would make mistakes. But then in an ideal world this magic bullshit wouldn’t have happened in the first place and no one would be asking you to work on someone you care about.”

Sam pulled his thumb off of Steve’s arm and leaned forward on his elbows. “I know. I just- fuck this is hard.”

The poor coffee table groaned as Bucky sat down next to Sam. “Yeah. It really is.”

After a few seconds of silence, Sam laughed, brittle and cracking around the edges. “What, are you the therapist now? Gonna sit here quietly until I talk my own way out of it?”

Bucky chuckled. “Whatever you’re gonna say is probably better than anything I’d have come up with anyway.”

“I think that was almost a compliment. Too bad it doesn’t count because you used self-deprecation to make your point.”

“Shut up. Look, if it’s any consolation, the first puncture is already healed and the shit that’s gonna fuck him about this whole thing isn’t going to be a botched blood draw; it’s going to be the part where he was magically enthralled for however long this takes. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, thanks. I mean my squadmates and I mangled each other pretty good when we first learned to set IVs at Kirtland. I don’t think any of us lost any sleep over it.”

Bucky smiled, glad to see that Sam could and would walk himself out of a funk without a whole helluva lot of prodding. The first week had been hard for Bucky, but Sam had been there in ways that were unexpectedly supportive and thoughtful without being patronizing. That they fell apart at different rates and in different ways wasn’t entirely surprising, and Bucky was glad to be able to help. 

It was a different kind of helping from what he was doing with Steve, and Bucky felt competent, valuable, _normal_. Someone trusted his logic enough to allow it to reframe their thinking, and Bucky couldn’t pretend that it didn’t feel like one hell of an endorsement of his mental stability.

Sam sat up and reached into the caddy. He pulled out another packaged needle and more alcohol swabs. Bucky watched as he cleaned Steve’s arm where a drop of blood had coagulated under Sam’s thumb, and then opened another swab to clean the whole area.

This time, Sam changed and filled the myriad vacuum tubes without a problem. While Sam labelled the tubes and wrapped them together with a rubber band, Bucky cleaned up all the packaging and tossed it in the trash. He sat down beside Steve as Sam finished up. His arm was already completely healed and sat with unnatural stillness. His face wasn’t the slack-jawed expression of unconsciousness, but it was sufficiently devoid of happiness that it reminded Bucky of Steve’s news-watching face, albeit without the knitted brow for emphasis. 

He only looked at Steve for a moment, the evidence of their current situation still too raw too dwell on, before turning back to Sam. Sam tossed the last of the supplies in the caddy and stripped off his gloves with something that approximated a smile.

“I’m gonna run this down to medical and they’ll send it to Bruce.”

Bucky nodded. “Sounds good. Meet you in the mess hall?”

“Yeah,” Sam answered. He didn’t sound what Bucky would call enthusiastic, but the jittery and panicked energy from earlier seemed to have dissipated. 

The empty exhaustion of caretaking had been coming more and more frequently lately, and it seemed to Bucky to be all that Sam had left. It sure as hell was all that Bucky had anymore — that and an ever increasing string of nightmares that left him tired, sick to his stomach, and less hopeful with every passing day. 

But tired or not Sam pulled on his running shoes, grabbed his water pack for their morning run, and snagged the caddy that held the vials of Steve’s blood. As Sam closed the door to their quarters, Bucky finished lacing up his shoes and then helped Steve with his. Sam would pull through this rough patch, just like Bucky would pull through his. Sam was nothing if not determined and resilient, he’d proved that time and again since Bucky had gotten to know him.

*****

Sam groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. “I swear to god I read this exact mission report last week.”

“That’s because you did,” Bucky said distractedly.

“Wait, what?” Sam asked, suddenly alert.

“Jensen copy/pastes the same sentences into every report to minimize his effort. His reports are all technically accurate but I think he uses macros for the main bits,” Bucky explained.

“Can I order him to take a creative writing course? Jesus, it’s so dry my eyeballs are getting ashy,” Sam groused.

Bucky winged the leftover mayo packet from lunch over his shoulder to Sam. “Apply as needed.”

“Man, fuck you,” Sam said with a laugh. 

They read on for another hour before Sam got terminally bored again. “We’ve been doing the same shit with the same results for how fucking long?”

“Eighteen days,” Bucky answered mechanically.

“Aren’t you bored yet?” Sam asked incredulously.

“Seventy years gave me a good level of tolerance for interminable boredom,” Bucky replied dryly.

Sam shrugged and figured that was a fair response, but damn this shit was boring. It was also disheartening as fuck that every lead they got was utter trash, but being bored by it was a lot more tolerable than being sad all the time. 

And speaking of bored, Sam had long since crossed that threshold outside of work. He and Bucky had gone from subsisting on movies and every card game they knew — from rummy to crazy eights to Texas hold ’em to ERS — and moved on to _Craftsy_ classes. To be fair, that was Nat’s fault. She’d overnighted them three pottery wheels and a pallet of clay mix and told them to make her “something nice.” She'd signed them up for an online class too, and accordingly they now split their nights between making ugly ceramic bowls and knitting. Knitting was Bucky’s doing, saying that that was where they got their spare socks back in the war and making one’s own socks was a manly endeavor. 

Steve had tried both the pottery and the knitting under Sam and Bucky’s direction, but after the first few attempts his wheel had ended up being a tool tray. Instead, Steve sat at a nearby table, listening to audiobooks and watching baseball games. 

Thinking about getting out of the office and going down to their “craft room,” as Tony had started calling it, was actually sounding really appealing. They could plow through the rest of the sceptre-related reports and then put everything else off until tomorrow. There were two more reports to read and catalogue, and then they could be free, Sam figured. 

Bucky looked a little skeptical at the idea once Sam proposed it.

“Aw come on, man,” Sam cajoled. “What are they gonna do? Fire us? We work for a defunct government agency. SHIELD can’t fire us. We can take the afternoon off. Hell, we should take the afternoon off.”

Bucky seemed to be considering and Sam didn’t push. Bucky always seemed to need time to think through his choices, at least when he wasn’t in the field, and Sam could respect that. In terms of Bucky’s decision making, though, this one was quick. It wasn’t even ten minutes later that Sam looked up to see Bucky locking all his stuff in the drawers of his desk. 

“You coming or not, Wilson?” Bucky asked.

Sam snorted. “Yeah, alright. What are we doing?”

“Did you see that four foot tall vase that they made in that youtube video? I wanna try that,” he declared.

“The one with two guys throwing it together?” Sam asked, surprised that Bucky would recommend something new and previously unattempted.

“Yeah.”

“That’s a little outside of our skillset,” Sam observed.

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t expect it to work. But it’ll be fun.”

Sam could get behind that. Fun sounded like a nice change of pace. He wondered if this was the kind of spontaneity that Steve had said used to be Bucky’s norm, how he would drag them out to see stuff on the spur of the moment. Steve had always lamented how reserved and almost afraid Bucky had seemed after HYDRA. Sam hoped that maybe this was a glimpse of what Steve had remembered. 

“Yeah, alright,” Sam agreed. They’d been in a rut for a while, the weight of their responsibilities dragging them down bit by bit. It was good to try something new, even if it meant, like so many other things in their lives now, doing it without Steve. They still had the right to take care of themselves.

*****

Sam was laughing and shouting at the same time. “You’re making it too tall!”

Bucky watched the top start to flop around wildly, the lip of the pot stretching more and more with each revolution of the wheel. Suddenly, a big chunk of it flew off and smacked Bucky right across the face. He took his foot off the wheel and began peeling the mess out of his hair and off his skin.

Sam doubled over in laughter, clutching his stomach, though he’d straightened up by the time Bucky was done salvaging some of his dignity. 

“I told you it was too tall,” Sam reminded him over the cheering that was coming from Steve’s baseball game on the TV.

In a moment of playful retaliation, Bucky reached _through_ the already drooping pot and smeared some of the clay on Sam’s face.

Sam spluttered in outrage and Bucky laughed in happy vengeance. He was so busy laughing that he didn’t see Sam grab a chunk of the clay and wing it at him. It hit him square in one — thankfully closed — eye, and then it was on.

By the time it was over, they were covered in clay, as were parts of the walls, floor, ceiling, and Steve. Steve hadn’t been an actual target, but a poorly aimed throw had gotten him in the shoulder rather than hitting Bucky. The droopy pot was gone, having been entirely cannibalized for ammunition. They sat on the floor, leaning against the supply cabinets and drinking black coffee from the break room down the hall.

“How long do you think this is going to take to clean up?” Sam asked.

“Fuck, at least two hours,” Bucky groaned.

Sam nodded into his coffee. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

“Easier when it’s still wet, right?” Bucky asked.

“That’s what he said,” Sam shot back.

Bucky choked on his coffee, much to Sam’s delight.

“Come on,” Sam said, scrambling to his feet. “Don’t go trying to die just to get out of helping me.”

Bucky took the proffered hand to help pull himself to standing. “Wouldn’t dream of it, asshole.”

*****

They were finally clean, as was the craft room, and Bucky was getting Steve to bed. Sam waited in the hall for Bucky. They were growing more comfortable together, but Sam knew, both from personal and professional experience, that saying what you felt was often the most direct route to healthy relationships.

“Hey, Bucky,” he said.

“Hey,” Bucky murmured back.

“I had a great time today. Thank you for suggesting that we throw that pot together.”

“Oh, we threw that pot alright,” Bucky joked.

Bucky chuckled and Sam snorted. The first week, Sam had wondered if Bucky could sustain this caretaking long term. The second, he’d been questioning himself more than Bucky. But in the third week, they’d hit their stride almost at the same time, and it was nice seeing Bucky smile like he had been smiling nineteen days ago.

It seemed like the most natural thing to pull Bucky into his arms for a hug. They hadn’t been tactile with each other before Steve… left. Steve had been the catalyst for their relationship, if their bare bones acquaintanceship could even be called a relationship. Steve had kept up the conversation between the three of them. Steve had brought them together. Without him there, it was less like they were together and more like just being nearby.

But this hug, it was happiness and joy, it was intimacy borne of laughter and friendship. Touch just for the sake of touch. Every moment of contact they’d shared since Steve had checked out had come from urgent necessity — a panic attack, a flashback, a dissociative episode, a crying jag — and was something done to repair, to ease, to palliate. Touch, like so many other things, had been a tool to help them make it through this nightmare. The knowledge that they could touch out of happiness, too, reminded Sam that no matter how this played out, life still existed. He still existed. They parted after a moment, seemingly settled in ways that they hadn’t been in quite some time, and Sam went to bed, hopeful for reasons that had nothing to do with finding the sceptre.


	4. Chapter 4

It had taken Bucky nearly two years after DC to be able to cry. At first he thought the therapist was full of it when he’d said that crying was healthy, then he thought that maybe he couldn’t cry because he didn’t need it to process, then he figured he just couldn’t do it anymore — everything else about him was broken, why not this too? But finally he realized that crying wasn’t something that everyone just “did.” Obviously there were people who cried at the Puppy Bowl and babies in commercials, but for most people, Bucky discovered, crying didn’t come as easily.

Instead, after much deliberation he exhausted all avenues of inquiry and finally approached Sam, and learned that crying was a skill, not always an innate ability. Still, it took him several more months, some Asgardian mead, and watching Lilo and Stitch to really get into his first solid cry since before he shipped out back in 1943. 

And it sucked. He felt sick to his stomach, he head was pounding, he was exhausted, and every nerve in his body felt raw. His chest ached and throbbed, and the memories of his sisters burned so bright in his mind that it hurt to open his eyes. When he finally calmed down he slept the rest of the afternoon and into the next morning.

After that, crying came easier, though no more pleasantly. He didn’t need the alcohol — not that he had been keen on it before anyway — but for a while he still stuck to children’s movies as the trigger. Eventually he got to the point where he could measure his stress, determine when a good cry would help, and find a nice quiet place to turn into a weeping, snotty mess. 

Usually being able to manage his emotions that effectively felt pretty empowering. He gained a lot more self-knowledge and understanding than he’d ever had, and more agency than he’d had in decades. That alone was enough to make the cries cathartic in their own right.

It had been five weeks since Steve had been enthralled and they were no closer to getting him back. If anything it felt more dire by the day, because every day more and more leads were crossed off their list. In all honesty, the leads were more like guesses at this point, and even those were thinning out considerably. Bucky knew it wouldn’t be long before he was staring at an empty briefing folder, and when that day came he didn’t really know how he would handle facing the chance that they might not get Steve back.

But where Bucky’s crying jags usually provided some form of catharsis, this one did not. Bucky sat on a rock at the shore of the small lake that adjoined the compound and sobbed into the darkness that shrouded everything at 3:50 am in the Adirondacks. He let himself grieve the relationship that had barely begun before being lost, he let himself feel the abject fear that Steve was truly gone and there would be no one left who understood everything that he had lived through — the War, the Depression, the serum, the future. He let himself remember losing everything to HYDRA only to then see them take more than he could ever have realized even after he was free. He let himself fall apart. But when it was over he felt like he had after Lilo and Stitch — sick to his stomach with a migraine that he knew would follow him for days, but no closer to putting himself back together.

But it was something. He’d purged enough of the infection, enough of the festering anger and pain and fear, that he could continue to shamble through life with something that resembled normal daily function. 

He trudged quietly back to their shared living quarters and slipped into his bed. Sam and Steve’s snores were quiet and even, undisturbed by his nightly activities.

*****

Sam watched a little incredulously as Bucky downed his first mug of coffee in one scorching pull. Bucky was a cream and sugar kind of guy; not just because he really loved sweets, but because goddammit he had the right to cream and sugar and he damn well planned to utilize it. Sam got that. War — especially being a POW — did a lot of things to people. Adding cream and sugar as a control mechanism was hardly the worst of the coping strategies he’d seen in practice. But looking at Bucky now with his eyes bloodshot and dark circles hanging under them — a sad parody of the Winter Soldier — and Sam knew something was wrong.

He wanted to ask, to try to make it better, but honestly there was nothing to be said at this juncture. Five weeks had been plenty of time to reassure themselves and each other, plenty of time for reality to set in, plenty of time to bring up every loss and trauma that they’d experienced in their fucked up lives thus far. Talking about it more wouldn’t fix anything. 

Instead Sam told Bucky that he needed a personal day and was calling in. When he asked Bucky if he’d do the same, it took surprisingly little effort to convince him. If he was being honest with himself, Sam felt as bad as Bucky looked. He’d woken up in cold sweats three nights in the past week, each time with the feel of that goddamn tacky sand on his hands, his knees stuck to his pants where the blood had started to dry. The only difference was that some nights it was Steve’s mangled body instead of Riley’s. Those nights hadn’t helped the sense of foreboding that grew in Sam’s mind with each passing day. So Sam figured that between that and whatever hell Bucky was reliving, they both deserved a free day. 

Unfortunately, there was still Steve to consider. Sam and Bucky were the only people at the Compound that the rest of the team trusted enough to look after him given what happened when Project Insight went up in flames and SHIELD collapsed, nevermind that everyone at the Compound had been personally vetted by Hill. So their day wouldn’t really be a day off, but at least they didn’t have to pretend to be happy, or even functional, around everyone else. They could hole up in their quarters and be as antisocial as they needed to be.

They watched Moana and sniffled quietly when Grandma Tala died, shouted at Maui being an ass, yelled like it was the superbowl at the Kakamora, and cheered like their team had won when Moana put the stone in Te Ka’s forehead, turning her back into Te Fiti. After that, they tried playing Boggle, but had to quit because Bucky had trouble picking out only the English words. So they switched to Clue, and then Uno, which just resulted in lots of mumbled swearing in multiple languages when Sam played three draw-fours in a row.

When lunch rolled around they couldn’t exactly order in since the Compound wasn’t on any maps, but Bucky did manage to sweet talk the kitchen lady out of a few pizzas. Sam would never cease to be amazed at his ability to lay it on thick, even in the middle of emotional exhaustion. No doubt Bucky was someone that parents had warned their daughters about back in the day.

They watched Cake Wars while they ate, and afterwards Sam decided to take a lazy afternoon nap. But something about watching the empty shell of Steve sitting dead-eyed in the common area of their quarters while they moved around him settled uncomfortably in his gut as he fell asleep. 

Sam knew it wasn’t long after he fell asleep that he woke up, sweat on his brow and breathing hard. He sat up and pulled his knees into his chest, leaning over them and rubbing his eyes to dispel the images that lingered there. 

The well maintained doors of the compound opened silently, so when Bucky stepped in with a soft “Hey,” Sam jumped.

“Sorry,” Bucky said.

“S’fine,” Sam muttered.

Bucky sat on the edge of the bed next to Sam. “You been having those a lot more often lately, huh?”

Fuck. It wasn’t surprising that he’d noticed, but having his problems visible to someone else made him feel a little too raw, a little too vulnerable. Bucky was clearly not sleeping himself. Of course he heard whatever bullshit sounds Sam had made in his sleep. Sam let his fists ball up in frustration and anger. Being mad was easier than feeling helpless in the face of violent nightmares that left the people he cared about dead, especially when waking brought no reprieve from the loss. Fuck Bucky for coming in here like that. If nothing else, Sam had the right to be fucked up alone and in peace.

He decided that a shower and a change of clothes would be the best way to feel better and at the same time escape having to talk to Bucky. But before he could follow through an overly warm hand landed lightly on his bare shoulder.

“Hey,” Bucky said. “Hey,” he repeated more earnestly when Sam didn’t look up. “Sam, it’s not just you.”

Sam looked over at Bucky. He was still rubbing his thumb against Sam’s back, but avoiding eye contact, looking down at his lap. “I’ve been struggling lately too.”

It wasn’t the words themselves that struck Sam, but the fact of the admission. Bucky didn’t open up like that, at least not to Sam. He unclenched his fists, letting his anger go as the situation they were in became about more than just him. Vulnerability was easier to bear when it was a two way street. 

“I guessed as much,” he finally said into the dim light of his bedroom. “You look like shit in the mornings.”

Bucky snorted. “Feel like it too.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Sam sympathized. 

Bucky nodded. “All I’m saying is you don’t have to go it alone.”

Sam felt tears threaten to well up and he blinked, swiping at his eyes. “You don’t either.”

The gentle circles on his back paused — just for a fraction of a second, but long enough for Sam to catch Bucky’s surprise. He shifted, pulling Bucky into his arms, and the skin of Bucky’s arm and neck against Sam’s was overwhelming. He remembered what it’d been like before, when he had gone weeks or months without the touch of someone else’s skin against his, the feeling it brought when contact was made like two electrical lines connecting with a shock. Abruptly he remembered the last time he had been held like this: two days before Steve was taken from them. 

The thought of that night — falling asleep with Steve’s head pillowed on his chest — was enough that Sam couldn’t hold back his tears. Bucky pulled him in tighter, the servos in his arm whirring quietly. Sam clung, his fingers bunching in Bucky’s shirt. 

Everything hurt a thousand times more in Bucky’s arms. It was like feeling fully human for the first time in an eternity, like when his mama first wrapped her arms around him at Walter Reed after he got back. It was like he had been half alive, just a shell that could only register the strongest and most persistent emotions, and when he’d suddenly been reconnected with someone else everything erupted in agonizing technicolor. 

Far before Sam was ready, Bucky pulled back. Sam, not one to embarass himself, let go and straightened up. 

“Thanks,” he said, wiping his eyes.

Bucky shoved at Sam’s hip and Sam obligingly scooted over without much thinking about why. “I was gonna say that neither of us have been getting great sleep lately and I could use a nap too. You know,” Bucky paused, “if that’s cool with you.”

Prior to this, the only times they had ever shared a bed had been in the field — two men awkwardly cramming their large frames into a shitty full size motel bed or wedging themselves into a shared pup tent. But whatever awkwardness there may once have been between them was gone, and all that remained was the relief of not being alone anymore. 

Sam scooted over, ceding half the bed to Bucky, and pulled the covers over himself again. They lay there, not touching but close enough that Sam could feel the warmth radiating from Bucky. It was a relief not to be alone, but it wasn’t close to enough. Even so, they lay still and silent for nearly half an hour before Bucky asked, “You asleep?”

“God, no,” Sam answered.

He shifted uncomfortably and his hand accidentally brushed Bucky’s. But accidental or not, it was enough of an invitation that Bucky twined their fingers together and from there it wasn’t five more minutes until Sam was half laid out over Bucky and listening to the steady beating of his heart. Another couple of minutes of that and Sam was out like a light.

*****

Given how exhausted they both were it was several hours later when they finally woke up. While Bucky came to, Sam stretched and flexed on the bed next to him. They quickly rolled away from each other, their previous personal space parameters having been immediately reinstated.

“Sleep alright?” he asked.

Sam nodded, his face bearing the marks of Bucky’s shirt fabric from the long nap. “Yeah, I really needed the rest. You?”

“Yeah,” Bucky replied. He didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t managed to sleep that long in a stretch for close to two weeks. This felt good; no reason to admit to that and make it heavy just yet.

After a few minutes, Bucky registered that it was darker in the room than it had been when they’d fallen asleep. What little light that had filtered through the blackout curtains was gone, which meant that the sun had set. He groped around for his phone, checking the nightstand and then patting his pockets, but he couldn’t find it. 

“Whatcha looking for?”

“My phone. Musta left it in the living room,” Bucky answered.

Sam rolled over and snagged his, thumbing it on. “1851.”

“Shit. We slept through two alarms,” Bucky muttered.

Sam groaned and rolled out of the bed, following Bucky to the living room.

Steve was where Bucky had left him, staring blankly at the opposing wall and sitting in a puddle of his own piss.

Guilt welled up in him and forgotten memories of Hydra’s punishment for a failure of this magnitude washed over him, but Bucky accepted them as his due. Half-remembered pain ghosted over Bucky and he let it take hold as he gathered Steve a change of clothes. He had curled around Sam in a bedroom just down the hall while Steve sat alone and forgotten until his bladder couldn’t wait for someone to lead him to the bathroom. But no matter how much Bucky was willing to accept whatever his own mind dished out, he also knew that he needed to take care of the situation at hand. Violently he shuttered all of his emotions about Steve behind some of the very thick bulkheads where he stored most of the other emotional shit in his mind, and he focused on what he needed to do.

Sam grabbed the cleaning supplies out of the small pantry that they shared while Bucky determinedly herded Steve down the hall and into the bathroom. It was an unspoken routine — Bucky did the bathing and Sam did the cleaning. Knowing which task he had to accomplish meant that the routines took less effort to plan and execute, but it didn’t mean that stripping Steve for another shower got any easier to do, at least not emotionally. 

With the ease of well honed practice of post-workout ablutions and bedtime rituals, Bucky got Steve bathed and into new clothes. Then he sent Steve back to the living room while he tidied the bathroom and started a load of laundry. By the time he joined Sam and Steve, the living room was clean and Sam had plated up some leftovers from their pizza lunch for Steve. It wasn’t more than a snack but it would help keep their routine since they managed to miss one of Steve’s afternoon snack alarms as well. They had discovered early on that predictability in digestion was quite important.

Bucky got Steve going on the food while he and Sam got themselves presentable enough to head down to the mess. 

It was beginning to feel overwhelming, caring for Steve 24/7. He had to be constantly on-call — no breaks, no sick days, no personal days. Fuck, as this afternoon revealed, he couldn’t even take a couple hours to himself. His whole life revolved around Steve. He didn’t want to resent Steve, but he was beginning to. Steve hadn’t had to run off and play the hero. He could have waited for backup. But wasn’t that just like Steve — no plan, no parachute, no backup. And look where it got them. Bucky put on his sneakers as angrily as anyone could feasibly put on sneakers and stalked back out to Steve.

Watching him sit there, eating with all the coordination of a high school science fair robot, Bucky’s resentment faded and the guilt welled up again, a different track but still a well-worn one. Maybe if he had gotten there sooner he could have stopped it. Maybe if he picked the right prisoner to bring back from that castle they would have gotten the intel they needed. By the time the team had coordinated a strike, the base had been abandoned and no trace of what went on there had remained. They’d missed their opportunity by hours. Bucky couldn’t help the thought that maybe failing in that was his fault too.

Sam jostled him out of his daze when he joined them, elbowing Bucky gently in the side.

“Let’s self-flagellate later. It’s dinner time,” he said jokingly.

Bucky snorted and shook his head, hating that Sam could read him so easily. But after living together for three years, even though they had never really gotten to know each other as close friends — at least not until recently — Bucky knew that it was only to be expected.

As they made their way to dinner, Bucky was still thinking about how well Sam seemed to know him. They bumped into a few folks who were on rotation at the Compound. It was a relatively unpopulated base given that it was technically a civilian installation, but it gave Bucky a chance to watch Sam and think things through. 

After three conversations with various personnel and a meal, Bucky concluded that they knew each other better than expected, or maybe more accurately were more familiar with one another than he had realized. Moving around each other, working in concert to get Steve taken care of while also helping one another had become effortless. He and Steve had been like that back in Brooklyn, and Bucky had been mourning that ease of being with someone else when he in fact had it right in front of him. 

Sam.

By the time that they made it back to their rooms, Bucky had resolved to stop taking Sam for granted. He’d known that they may never get Steve back, though he’d resolutely ignored that possibility because it felt like admitting defeat. But Sam was the farthest thing from defeat, and Bucky thought that maybe, if worse came to worse, he might not have lost everything that made life worth living. 

They settled in on the sofa to watch a show about treehouses. Bucky shot a glance over at Sam. For all that he’d recognized their familiarity and comfort with each other, Bucky realized he didn’t actually know much about Sam. Sam was becoming more important to him with every day that passed, Bucky felt his curiosity peak.

“So you got any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

Sam turned, his eyebrows raised a little, but nodded. “Yeah, I got a sister, Sarah. My brother Gideon died when I was fifteen. You had sisters, right?”

“Yeah, I had four: Becca, Dotty, Margie, and Winnie,” Bucky said. The names were familiar and worn on his tongue, even though he hadn’t had cause to speak them in what felt like ages. 

“Wow, me and Sarah got up to enough trouble. I can’t imagine four sisters,” Sam said shaking his head with a chuckle.

“All younger,” Bucky said, a smile making the corners of his eyes pinch up.

“I bet you beat the hell out of anyone that so much as looked at them,” Sam guessed with a smile.

“Oh, damn right I did. How do you think I got to be a golden gloves boxer? I was practicing since before I was old enough to be fighting,” Bucky said.

Sam chuckled. “I don’t think I was half the stress on my parents that you were.”

Bucky smiled. “No, I don’t think you could have been.”

“So when did you start boxing?”

It took Bucky a second to recall that particular bit of information. “I think I weaseled my way into the gym when I probably eight. Couldn’t get anyone to teach me that young, so I just swept up for the chance to be there, but I watched and practiced on the side and when I got in fights with Steve I could put it to use. By the time I was maybe ten or eleven and got someone to take me on, I was already better than everyone else my age.”

Sam nodded, but didn’t reply, so Bucky took up the thread of the conversation. “Where’d you learn to fight?”

Sam shrugged. “I mean Harlem wasn’t always the easiest place to live, so I got in my fair share of fights growing up, but I didn’t train or anything, at least not until I got in the service. After I got out of basic and into the PJs, the hand-to-hand aspect got a lot more attention.”

“Well, I’m glad the military can still train a decent fighter,” Bucky commented.

Sam laughed, his eyes wide and mocking. “Was that a compliment?”

Bucky shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Wow, never thought I’d see the day,” Sam said, smiling playfully.

“Oh, fuck you too,” Bucky shot back with a shake of his head.

Sam laughed and pushed Bucky’s shoulder affectionately. “Alright, so other than boxing, what’d you do back in the day?”

“Well, as far as anyone but Steve knew, I spent my time maintaining my immaculate grades, boxing, and working to make sure my sisters could have whatever they needed,” Bucky answered.

Sam sat expectantly, his eyebrows raised. “And as far as Steve knew?”

“I read a lot of science fiction: Burroughs, Wells, Heinlein. Some of the nights when people thought I was at the gym or doing homework with Steve I just snuck over to his place to read. Sometimes we went to the library to get more books. My folks didn’t mind because they knew I wasn’t out getting into trouble like a lot of boys my age, but I still kept it to myself because I wanted to look cool. Never had to pretend with Steve though; he already knew I was a hopeless nerd,” Bucky explained wistfully.

Sam smiled. “Oh, I definitely got into trouble. Girls, alcohol, parties. I had good grades and played on the basketball team, but I got up to all sorts of nonsense. Mama probably wished I could have had nice hobbies like that, though what with Gideon and all I don’t think I really compared in terms of stress.”

Bucky smiled ruefully and nodded; Steve had told him what happened to Gideon once, how he had withered away and died during the height of the AIDS crisis, and Bucky wasn’t about to ask for more than Sam was willing to give. He thought about asking Sam what happened to his father, if in fact he’d ever known him — fathers skipping town was hardly a new phenomenon — when his phone buzzed. Sam nodded and Bucky took Steve down the hall for another scheduled bathroom break. 

All this time, and Bucky had never sat down to a normal get-to-know you conversation with Sam. They had been work-friends, almost friends but in the end still just colleagues. They talked shop, they talked trauma — which was almost like talking shop in their profession — and they joked around, but they didn’t know stuff about each other that wasn’t work related. They didn’t talk about the stuff that people talked about just for the sake of talking about: family, hobbies, anecdotes from a different life. It was a damn shame was what it was, he realized. 

They might have gotten to know one another sooner, and maybe without prompting from Steve, if he’d tried to be social enough get to know the guy he was sharing an apartment with. Sam had sure as hell tried but Bucky had drawn his boundaries very clearly, and Sam was respectful, if nothing else. He’d never pushed for more than Bucky had been willing to give. 

Bucky wondered if maybe this was one of those things that had to have its own time, that no amount of pulling his head out of his ass would have gotten them here sooner because Bucky had had to see for himself that Sam was someone he could trust. And there was the fact that three years ago he couldn’t even bear to be touched by anyone other than Steve. He could cover it well, but his skin crawled and every sense was dialed to eleven, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the well meaning pat to turn into abuse the way it always had with his handlers and the STRIKE team and Pierce. There had been no way back then that he could have sat down to get to know Sam. He’d been too busy getting to know himself.

He realized that feeling guilty over taking a while to get to know Sam was stupid, and he resolved to enjoy the newfound closeness he had with Sam. But walking down the hall back to the living room, that thought brought its own guilt. Steve was walking within arm’s reach of Bucky. Bucky was so happy with this new friend that he wasn’t even thinking about Steve. He was building something without Steve, even as Steve was right there in the middle of it.

He was so busy with Sam that he had forgotten Steve in the living room while they napped. How selfish could he be? How callous and heartless was he becoming that Steve was more of a cherished memory than a sick friend? 

In their quarters, Bucky dropped back onto the sofa, this time on the other end of it from Sam instead of next to him. This was fucked up. Everything was fucked up. He was giving up on Steve — he could feel himself trying to grieve him and move on, trying to build something out of the rubble that this enthrallment left, and it hadn’t even been two months. The guilt eddied in his mind, grabbing at him and trying to pull him down, and unbidden, a memory of himself and Steve came to the forefront of his mind.

_Sam had gone somewhere for the day, something about his sister, and Steve and Bucky had had their apartment in the Tower to themselves. Bucky sat naked in one of their armchairs in their living room. Steve knelt, naked as well, between his legs. Bucky was hard, and Steve eyed him with lustful determination. He licked tentatively at first and Bucky shuddered. It was warm and wet and not nearly enough to slake his desire, but he only watched as Steve explored, mouthing and tonguing and tasting this new and unfamiliar territory. Bucky had blown Steve the night before and it had been so goddamn satisfying to watch as he came undone, his eyes dilated so much that the blue was only barely visible around the iris. If Steve wanted to return the favor, Bucky wasn’t about to say no._

_Steve, with a sudden burst of confidence, opened his mouth and took Bucky’s dick in his mouth. Bucky watched his lips stretch and felt his tongue swirl hesitantly around the head. He moaned loudly, making his appreciation known, and Steve took the hint, doing it again and again._

_It was amazing. Not just the suck job, though if that was questionable in execution it was more than made up for in enthusiasm, but also just Steve. Steve was everything in that moment — Bucky’s best friend, the one who understood more of him than anyone else ever could, he was Bucky’s lover, he was safety, comfort, and home in the way that no one else could ever be._

Bucky remembered that feeling, the complete and total happiness that came from being with Steve, the ease. That Bucky had spent the last few hours trying to recreate something like that with Sam while ignoring Steve’s needs left Bucky drowning in self-loathing. How could he be trying to move on from that only five weeks after losing Steve? And hell, Steve wasn’t even lost. They were still on the trail to save him, and even if that trail was getting harder to follow, no one was suggesting that he was a lost cause. Considerable resources were being devoted to restoring Steve, so that meant that it was Bucky, just Bucky, who couldn’t get with the program.

“You alright?” Sam asked, interrupting Bucky’s hundred and ten car pile-up of emotions.

“Fine,” he snapped. 

Sam’s jaw tensed and he nodded. “Yeah, alright,” he said, and then got up and left the room.

Guilt from lashing out at Sam welled up too, but Bucky quickly turned it to anger because he hadn’t been the only one to neglect Steve earlier. They’d both put themselves before Steve’s needs. They’d both been making fucking pottery and knitting and playing cards and being all buddy buddy while Steve sat quietly next to them, forgotten. What right did either of them have to be happy in the face of Steve’s plight? Sam deserved to be snapped at just as much as Bucky deserved the guilt from doing it.

He sat on the sofa, the TV off, and stared at the wall just like Steve did in some sort of penance for another hour and a half until Steve’s bedtime alarm sounded. Once Steve was safely in bed, Bucky put on his running clothes and laced up his sneakers. Then he silently slipped out of the compound and into the woods to run until he couldn’t feel or hear anything over the beating of his heart and the whoosh of his own breath in his ears. He knew he couldn’t clear his mind, but he could drown it out. 

Maybe tomorrow night he’d be tired enough to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

After another week of caring for Steve, Sam and Bucky had managed to have two yelling fights, a combined total of eight sleepless nights, and one decent heart-to-heart about guilt in its many iterations which dovetailed into talking about the difficulty of caretaking. 

All those things hadn’t made the week perfect by any stretch but overall it was better, almost tolerable. Survivable. At least when they were together. By the fifth night of the sixth week they had given up on anything resembling formality or awkwardness about boundaries and personal space and instead jumped headlong into sharing a room, at least for sleeping purposes. 

Sam’s nightmares had gotten bad enough that his screaming had drawn security. It was mortifying. He had been forced to explain that he had not, in fact, been disemboweled by the Winter Soldier in a fit of regression and programming, but was instead just having a great week and hey thanks for asking if he’d seen anyone about that. Sam had closed the door behind the security personnel and paced the living room, full of anger and frustration, for ten minutes before Bucky had come out to check on him. The thought of being touched or even in the same room as someone else made his skin crawl and he briskly made his way down the hall. 

Bucky didn’t say anything when Sam ducked into Steve’s room and checked his pulse, just for his own peace of mind, but Sam knew he was watching. After spending several minutes just watching Steve’s mindless form breathe on the bed in magically-enforced sleep from which he could not be roused without an order from Bucky, he shook his head and staggered back into the hallway. Bucky was waiting there for him.

“Come on, pal,” he said gently, and Sam nodded, following Bucky down the hall and into his room. 

After that night, they made no bones about curling around each other in their sleep. It lessened the nightmares to some degree, but more importantly it made the waking more bearable, and going back to sleep an actual possibility. It was certainly the only comfort they had managed to derive for themselves in all of it.

Nonetheless, it did nothing for what happened four days later.

They were two days into the seventh week of what was becoming the most monotonous and the second longest hell Sam could recall. Only Gideon’s passing, in all its horror, had drawn out longer than this. The knowledge that he had survived it before and could do it again was what gave Sam the strength to plow through.

He shifted his chair to put his feet back on the desk after acquiring his third cup of coffee of the afternoon. The latest crop on the sceptre’s location was piled on their desks in a series of file folders. 

Sam stared at the satellite imagery on the eighth page of the fourteenth file of the afternoon before flipping back to the first and then digging around in his desk for a report that he could have sworn he saw a couple of weeks back. By the time he found the file, hurriedly looked up a number on his laptop, and made a poorly understood phone call to someone in Sokovia, Bucky had given up all pretense of reading his own intel, instead waiting for Sam to reveal whatever connection he had made. 

“Did you see the report on Sokovian HYDRA activity from the 17th?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, sure. It mentioned something about a potential cell, but all the information we have said the suspected location didn’t draw enough power to be an immediate threat. Definitely not a research facility,” Bucky recalled.

“Right. That’s what I read too. But look at this,” Sam said, holding out an updated thermal imaging map of the region. “This castle here,” he pointed, “it has the same energy signature that the previous report indicated.” 

“Sure does,” Bucky agreed.

“Right. So I cross checked their location with the Sokovian Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Power — which we apparently didn’t do before. There’s no record of any clients in the area. I thought maybe it was a clerical error or someone cooking the books, but there aren’t any power lines anywhere our satellites can detect,” Sam explained.

Bucky stared for a moment. “Either they’ve got their own geothermal going on in there — which isn’t likely for that region — or we’ve been overlooking something major.”

“Uh huh, that’s what I’m thinking,” Sam agreed. 

Bucky tossed Sam his phone which had migrated across the desk as more pages from folders had been laid out, pushing away everything in their wake. “Call Hill. You saw it in the report when everyone else missed it. You take the credit.”

Sam smiled and hit his speed dial for Maria Hill.

*****

Bucky hated waiting while everyone else, including Sam, was out in the field. This mission needed as many personnel on the ground and in the air as they could muster, but even so Bucky couldn’t bring himself to leave Steve with anyone else. So Sam had hugged him tightly before boarding the jet with the combat personnel available at the Compound and Bucky put on a brave face as he tried to hide the fear that he felt.

Flight time to Sokovia, plus making various stops and coordinating with JSOC and a couple of SOF teams from the EU, would run a minimum of six hours until the strike began. It was an obnoxiously long amount of time to burn. So after the jet left, Bucky had gotten Steve dressed and they had headed out for another morning run, hoping to kill some time.

Running, hitting the gym, eating, and more running occupied them through a fair part of it and hours later, Bucky’s adrenaline was finally beginning to ebb. Of course that’s when Sam shot off a quick text that said they were T-minus ten minutes to infiltration. With that it shot right back up and he hopped up to pace while he waited. 

Bucky had expected a protracted firefight followed by a long, drawn out search of the facility. Instead, he languished in boredom and anxiety for no longer than half an hour before his cell phone rang, Sam’s name on the screen. 

“Yeah?” he answered.

“We missed them. The facility is empty. They were here though, and recently. We found bodies in cells in what looks like a lab. They cleared out and left what look like test subjects to die. By decomp I’d say they’ve been dead three to five days, mostly due to dehydration and malnutrition. So we’re looking at being a week late, tops. But the sceptre isn’t here,” Sam said darkly. 

Bucky fought the urge to punch something, but his anger crested quickly and gave way to frustration and then despair. 

“Have you talked to Strange?” he asked, not hoping for anything, but casting his net all the same.

“He said he’ll pop over and give the place a once-over. Something about magic leaving trails and being able to track it. Maybe he can find something. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything,” Sam told him.

Bucky nodded before remembering that he was on the phone. “Yeah, thanks, Sam.”

“Take care of yourself,” Sam said, and the line went dead.

Helplessness swamped Bucky. There was nothing he could do but watch as everything fell further apart. His therapist had repeatedly mentioned the feeling of helplessness in relation to his PTSD and while he had agreed, he hadn’t felt it so strongly since the last time some Hydra tech had strapped him into a chair for maintenance. He felt impotent, like he couldn’t do anything that mattered to anyone, least of all Steve. 

He felt like he stood on a precipice. An abyss loomed before him and he waited, teetering on the brink, for Sam’s call to tell him whether or not they were going over that edge.

*****

Sam tucked his phone in his pocket and took a moment to clear his head. Bucky sounded wrecked, and Sam knew the feeling. It hadn’t set in yet, but Sam knew that it wouldn’t be long before he fell apart himself once the adrenaline of an aborted mission wore off.

He had come in ready for a knock-down drag-out fight with HYDRA only to find an empty base. His heart was still thundering in his chest but his muscles didn’t need all the oxygen it was sending out, making him lightheaded and nauseated all at once. 

Turning, he stalked back up the steps and out of the lab where the bodies were. He’d seen victims of dehydration before, and it was one of the worst ways to go that he could think of. In terms of sheer violence, Sam didn’t even think Riley’s death compared to that horror, and he was glad to leave that clean up to someone else. 

The comm in his ear crackled to life and someone said, “Sgt. Wilson, there’s a Dr. Strange here who would like to speak to you. Head down to the lab in the undercroft on the east side of the building.”

“The hell is an ‘undercroft’?” Sam asked.

“The basement,” someone else chimed in.

“Copy,” Sam answered, ignoring the fact that someone had clearly gone to one too many ren faires in their off time.

He had to ask for directions a few times — when he turned and went down a stair that led to a dead end room, or found his way awkwardly into what appeared to be a water closet — but finally he found himself in the basement lab. 

Strange was standing stiffly in the center of the room. As he got closer, Sam realized that Strange wasn’t just stiff, he was rigid, his body seized up, his back and legs arched like someone in the throes of tetany, only his toes touching the floor, the rest of him seemingly suspended in the air, and only the sclera of his eyes remained visible. 

“What happened?” Sam asked the young men with German flags on their shoulders.

One of them shrugged. “He said to keep his body safe and that he was going somewhere with his soul?”

He said it like a question and Sam nodded cautiously, feeling about as disbelieving as the young man sounded. He stood and watched, periodically checking his watch. In all, though, Strange was only “gone” for about five minutes. When he returned it was immediately obvious because he collapsed, gasping and groaning, to the ground. 

“You alright?” Sam asked.

“Fine,” Strange rasped. “God, I’m going to have cramps for days. Shit,” he grumbled as he staggered up to his feet. “In any case, hello again Sgt. Wilson. I have information that you might find interesting, though not particularly useful, I’m afraid.”

Sam dismissed the German soldiers, apprehension building in his gut. Strange waited until the others were gone before speaking. 

“The sceptre was here. Its magic is incredibly strong and it left what you might think of as an afterimage in its wake, especially given that they appear to have used it for a power source, among other things,” the sorcerer explained.

“‘Was’? So we missed it?” questioned Sam. He felt like he already knew the answer, but he needed to hear it definitively. 

“Yes. It’s off world now and beyond our reach. I tried to follow the magical trail, as it were, but it’s so heavily guarded against intrusion that even I can’t reach it. You would need an army, the likes of which Earth does not possess, to retrieve it,” Strange answered darkly.

Sam hung his head for a moment. His mind was filled with a strange static that he distantly recognized as shock. “And that was our only shot at undoing whatever did this to him?”

“There might be other ways, but in the time since he was enthralled I have read every tome that I can find on the subject and I still have no answers. I had hoped that the sceptre might open new insights into his situation, but without it I am afraid that I have arrived at the end of my abilities, at least for now,” Strange said apologetically.

“Yeah, alright. I’m gonna go break the news to everyone. Thanks for coming out to help,” Sam said mechanically.

Strange nodded, a sympathetic frown on his lips. “I will continue to pursue solutions should they arise, but I have no guarantee as to when or if they will.”

“I understand,” Sam said as he held out his hand. “Thanks anyway.”

Strange took Sam’s hand and Sam could feel the tremors that racked his hands, the thick bands of scar tissue that ran the length of his fingers, crossing this way and that. 

“I regret that I have nothing more to offer. I did not know the Captain, but he is a friend of Thor’s, and he has spoken to me at great length about him. You have my condolences.”

And that’s when it hit Sam. He’d seen it coming when he stepped foot into the empty castle, watched it gather momentum, had hoped against hope that something might pull him out of the path of the oncoming avalanche, but there was nothing now. No hope. Steve was gone. 

He quickly retracted his hand and stepped away, turning his back on the sorcerer. The tell-tale whoosh of the portal flared behind him and when it ended, Sam turned to be sure he was alone in the basement before falling to his knees and sobbing. 

Sam had experienced several “before and after” moments in his life, where “before” life was one way and “after” things were irreparably altered, usually in the worst way. His father being shot, Gideon succumbing to AIDS, and Riley being blown out of the sky right in front of him — those were always the ones the came to mind. But now this made the list as well. Steve was gone and all hope of resolving the problem had disappeared days before the intel had ever hit his desk. It was all for nothing. 

He gave himself a few minutes to cry and then dragged himself to his feet. He couldn’t stay there, as much as he felt immobilized with grief. The world always demanded that he keep moving, Sam knew that better than most. The tap at the sink still issued forth clear water and Sam washed his face in the icy liquid. He had intel to share and Bucky to get back to.

*****

Bucky knew that something was desperately wrong when he didn’t hear back from Sam within an hour. When Sam’s text came, after four nauseating hours, _ETA to compound 0330_ , Bucky felt dread settle in his stomach. Sam was being intentionally vague, withholding whatever he had learned for a face-to-face which wasn’t something people did with good, or even neutral, news.

He wrapped up their daily routine and put Steve to bed. It felt bittersweet, like the breaking of something fragile, as though after that night Steve would no longer be there. So he savored the moments, tainted though they were by what had already happened, before heading up to the hangar to meet Sam.

To his credit, Sam landed at almost exactly the predicted time. He looked like shit, which probably had a fair amount to do with an adrenaline crash, the general loss of sleep from a mission, and flying halfway around the world twice in less than eighteen hours, but Bucky knew it was more than that. 

Sam was already in his civvies when he disembarked and he didn’t even stop next to Bucky, just motioned him on, and they went out into the night to sit by the lake. 

Bucky could see the tears running down Sam’s face and he _knew_. 

Sam explained it quickly — it was an easy enough concept to relay — and then broke down into convulsive sobbing.

“Strange gave me his condolences,” Sam managed between hiccupping breaths. “He said he’ll keep trying but he basically thinks this is permanent. To him, this is as good as death.”

In the span of another few breaths, Bucky was sobbing too. The hope bled out of him and gave way to frustration, fear, and finally that goddamn helplessness made him so angry that he just wanted to scream and maybe punch someone. Instead they leaned on one another, clutching tightly and sobbing into each other’s shirts. 

“I told the rest of the team,” Sam said after finally catching his breath, the crying slacking off to the occasional sob. “Tony was in denial, said he would find a way. Thor was angry and flew off saying he could find magic that Strange couldn’t. Bruce just nodded and stood there like, I don’t know, like he expected it. And Clint and Nat, just cried. I’ve never seen Nat cry but she had tears on her face and that was the worst, how she just accepted it. Bucky, I’m not ready to give up like Nat did, but the fuck do I do with ‘condolences’?” Sam said, the sobs returning and his breath getting ragged again. 

Bucky didn’t want to accept it either, but like Sam, he was bereft of other plans. “And there’s no way to retrieve it?”

Sam shook his head and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. “He said it was in a location so secure that Earth couldn’t muster an army big enough to infiltrate. He said magic was off the table, too. I don’t really know more than that, but I mean even if I did, it’s not like we could get there; we can’t do space travel.”

To Bucky, the entire situation reminded him of the rail on the side of the train giving way, sending him hurtling into an abyss, and he was again without Steve. Everything of substance seemed to fall away and he was left stripped of the last threads of security in his life. They had teetered on the edge of the abyss and they had fallen.

His tears began to dry up, though the headache remained. He felt numb. Emotional shock, Bucky noted absently. He couldn’t _think_ , couldn’t plan anything ahead of them. The future seemed unimaginable, unreachable. Even breathing seemed untenable with his body so far away.

His mind spiralled down into darkness as he worried what would be done with Steve, like Steve was an old horse to put out to pasture, something to be put into storage. Horrible thoughts of euthanasia popped into his head. It was what HYDRA operatives did when they might be caught, when an asset might prove useful to the enemy, or when keeping someone became dangerous beyond reason. He had killed and seen killed quite a few targets of varying types over his seventy years with HYDRA, and if Steve could not be used or fixed Bucky had no doubt that he would have been killed.

But the Avengers were different, he tried to remind himself. No one abused him here, no one wiped his mind and stole his name, no one would kill him if he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do what they asked of him, and no one would do that to Steve either. Nevertheless, he could see it in his mind, some faceless tech with a syringe, because what was left of SHIELD wouldn’t be so crass as to use a gun to finish him. No, a gentle end found in sleep would be what they would choose. They would call it “humane.”

He knew logically that not only was this train of thought not helpful, it was also unrealistic, but the scenario continued to play itself out in his mind until he had to stumble away from Sam, and he vomited onto the muddy banks of the lake. 

Even after his stomach emptied, he continued to retch fruitlessly, tears streaming down his face. Sam came up and squatted next to him. He put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, but said nothing, simply waiting with him in his grief in the darkness of a summer night in the Adirondacks.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam was in tenth grade and Sarah in twelfth when Gideon died. Gideon had been diagnosed with HIV for few years by then and by the time the end came he was living in an AIDS ward. They knew it was coming when he caught a cold from another visitor so Sam and Sarah took off from school and his mother took off as much work as she could to spend with him. At the time, the week that they had with him had seemed like an eternity of sitting by that bed and listening to him cough. Later, it felt like no time at all. 

They had talked for as long as Gideon had the strength, Gideon listening to Sam and Sarah’s teenage troubles like they mattered next to anything he had been going through. Sam asked Gideon about life and what it meant. Gideon, through tears, had tried to give Sam hope that life did matter, even if right then it had felt like nothing more than pain. Sam tried to believe him, but after their dad had died three years before, shot in the crossfire of a convenience store robbery, it was hard to wrap his head around that. 

He, Sarah, and Darlene had been holding Gideon’s hands and rubbing his forehead when he died. He was sedated by then, but his thin frame was wracked by coughs, his lungs still trying vainly to expel the fluids that had accumulated from the onset of pneumonia three days prior. Sam hadn’t known what to expect, but one moment he was coughing and then next he wasn’t and that was it. 

In the years following Gideon’s coming out he had lost his faith. After their father’s death and then his diagnosis, he was just plain angry. Darlene told them he was mad at God which meant that he hadn’t really lost his faith, he’d just gotten a little off the path. But either way, he’d asked that a preacher didn’t give the service for his funeral and Darlene, for all her disagreements, had honored her son’s request. 

They had convened in a parlor at the funeral home, Gideon’s ashes in a cardboard box at the front of the room. A few of his friends, who mostly kept to themselves, and two of the nurses from the ward were the only people who attended besides Sam and his dwindling family. There were eulogies and a brief statement about civil rights and gay rights and that had been that. 

Sam and Sarah had never told anyone at school about their brother’s diagnosis out of fear of being ostracized. So in the end it was them and Darlene alone in their grief. They had a lot of quiet time for talking and introspection and solitary crying when they needed it, which in stark contrast to his father’s funeral three years earlier, wasn’t all bad. 

So to Sam, the days that followed the failed mission to Sokovia felt similar. The rest of the team showed up the morning after, their group totalling only eight, including himself, Bucky, and Steve, the air of the gathering reminding him of the service at the funeral home. 

For the first time that Sam could remember, everyone hugged everyone else without exception, alternating between wet eyes and hearty laughter. Tony and Nat smelled of vodka and they stayed that way for the entire first day. It was a memorial service in its own right. They cried, they shared stories — the best ones consisted of Steve yelling at senators and congresspeople or botching interviews because he didn’t understand a particular turn of phrase — and they pointedly did not talk about the future. 

But the bittersweet feeling had to at some point give way to more practical matters and with those came the uglier parts of grief. For Tony and Thor that meant anger and denial — anger at their perceived failings, as well as those of Strange, and the fervent belief that they, or someone they knew, might be able to set things to rights. Clint just drank black coffee and Nat’s vodka alternately, but he didn’t say anything, already deeply depressed. Bruce seemed to be in the middle of denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance at once, vacillating between various aspects of those as the conversation took turns here and there. Of all of them, Nat was the one who seemed to just accept it. 

“The better part of strategy is knowing when you’re beat. This is a fight I can’t win. I learned to accept my limitations early,” she said.

And if anything felt like despair it was that. Nat had always been the one to figure out the solution, to use the most unorthodox method to finish the mission, that she accepted defeat here made the loss real beyond his own grief. 

The practical discussions started the afternoon following their arrival. Nat, already into her acceptance of the situation and ever pragmatic, suggested either placement in a care facility or hiring a carer that moved into the facility to live with Steve. Thor took immediate exception to the idea, declaring that Asgard would not fail in the same way as Strange and storming out of the conference room and then the building altogether. Sam watched out the window as he raised his hammer, shouting for Heimdall, and then was whisked away in a flash of light. 

He wanted to hope that Thor might find something, but this wasn’t his first trip off-world to search for answers. Sam wasn’t really all that confident anymore.

Turning his attention back to the room he saw Bucky who was desperately trying to get his emotions to agree with what was a reasonable suggestion, but was instead just falling apart where he sat. 

“I don’t think any of us is ready for an immediate change,” Sam said, when the shock of Thor’s sudden departure had faded. “I think it might be best to let HR vet some caregivers and in the meantime Bucky and I can continue on as we have been. Once you find someone, they can start part-time, working with us and learning the routines, rather than just an abrupt hand-off.”

Bucky’s demeanor didn’t get better with Sam’s suggestion, but the tension didn’t worsen which he counted as a win. As for himself, he felt awful. He desperately longed to be away from Steve and at the same time, aside from the guilt of that, he also had no inclination to turn Steve over to anyone, to leave as though life could go on after that. He scrubbed his hands over his face, letting his eyes close, and sighed.

“I’ll vet the candidates personally,” Bruce offered. 

Sam straightened and nodded, grateful.

“You’re giving up awfully fast,” Tony snapped, clearly three sheets to the wind, which was helping exactly no one. 

“Tony, they’ve been doing everything they can for nearly two months and they’ve been doing it every single hour of the day without a break. They deserve help and since we’re going to be stuck waiting on a solution for an undetermined amount of time, Sam and Bucky have the right to go on with their lives. Keeping them here doesn’t help Steve,” Nat argued calmly.

Tony sneered and raised his glass to his mouth again. Bucky stood up and leaned across the table and snagged the glass out his hand, hurling it to break against the far wall. Then he turned and stalked out of the room without a word.

“You’re way out of line,” Bruce said, a touch louder than was comforting.

Clint chimed in with his agreement, finally adding something to the conversation, but the door closed behind Sam as he followed Bucky out of the room and he didn’t hear the reply.

Bucky didn’t go far. He was standing and looking out the window that faced the forest to the west of the Compound. Sam came up to stand beside him and waited in silence.

Finally, Bucky shifted and Sam turned his head slightly towards him. Bucky opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking.

“Everyone keeps talking about solutions, but do any of us really believe that anymore? I feel like it’s just politeness and nicety to cover up the fact that he’s basically a walking corpse.” 

Sam swallowed hard and stared out the window. That was the single most pointed thing Bucky had said about their situation and as horrible as it was, he couldn’t argue with it.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Sam finally replied.

He couldn’t help thinking that this would be easier if Steve were injured and on life-support. There were established metrics for determining whether ending support was justified, and while that wasn’t always clear cut either, at least it was a well-trod path. Here they were flying blind. There was no one to consult, no tests to be done. So rather than pull the metaphorical plug, they would just push him aside and go back to their lives. Sam wasn’t itching to kill Steve but he wasn’t sure that keeping him around was any more fair to anyone, Steve included.

He watched the birds flitting among the trees and hoped against reason that everyone could get their shit together before he had to go back in there. He didn’t have the energy to deal with everyone else’s, though mostly just Tony’s, bullshit; he could barely deal with his own. Having to handle grief and practical arrangements, only to have those difficult decisions undercut by anger and doubt from the people who should be helping, was already getting old.

Bucky nudged Sam’s side with his elbow, his hands still in his pockets, and motioned back down the hall with a nod of his head. They walked silently back to the meeting room, but it was empty save for Nat who stood looking out the window.

“We came to an understanding, Bruce is contacting HR to set it up. A caretaker will be hired to care for him here for now, though we may try to find someplace more suitable long term,” she said without turning around.

“Thanks,” Sam said.

“Tony had someone drive him back to the Tower, he left about five minutes ago,” she continued. “But I think Bruce, Clint, and I would like to stay for another couple of days, if that’s alright with you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky said.

“Alright, I’ll see you at dinner then,” she replied.

Sam and Bucky waited but she was clearly done, never bothering to turn and meet their gaze. In unison, he and Bucky hauled themselves up from where they had been leaning on the conference table. Sam gently gripped Nat’s shoulder and she put her hand over his briefly before it fell away. As he moved out of her space, Bucky came up and a laid a gentle kiss on her cheek, whispering something in Russian into her ear. Her right hand came up and she cupped his cheek. She turned to face him, but said nothing, their foreheads gently resting together for a moment, until she pulled away from that too, turning again to the window.

Wordlessly, they made their way back to their quarters and Steve, just in time for Steve’s next bathroom alarm.

*****

After the events of the afternoon, Bucky was less than enthusiastic about spending time around people, whoever those people might be. He ate silently and then retreated, along with Steve, and surprisingly Sam, to their quarters.

“You don’t have to keep me company,” Bucky said. He tried to take the edge off the words, but it still came out with a bite.

“I didn’t really wanna hang out with them right now anyway,” Sam said, sounding the tiniest bit hurt.

All the anger bled out of Bucky at that because Sam was doing the exact same thing that Bucky was. 

“Wanna watch Bake Off until the bedtime alarm?” he asked, his tone softer and less aggressive.

Sam half smiled. “Yeah, sure.”

It wasn’t an hour before Sam was snoring softly, his head leaned back on the top edge of the sofa, his fingers still tightly entwined with Bucky’s. In the previous weeks so many of their barriers had come tumbling down that, at least in the privacy of their quarters, Bucky and Sam had begun to casually touch as often as they could fit into their lives. It wasn’t about sex, at least it hadn’t been so far and Bucky didn’t imagine that either of them would be interested in that anytime soon, but the small comfort of touch was a balm against what the loss of Steve had left in their lives. 

The nightmares still came, but with Sam he slept longer between them and rested more deeply when he did sleep. Bucky knew that the same applied to Sam, and while it made him feel guilty, it also soothed a part of him that therapy had never been able to touch. 

Bucky could comfort someone. Bucky could make someone feel safe. Bucky could be trusted. 

But somehow that realization brought into stark contrast what he still hadn’t managed to regain with Steve in the past three years. Bucky had thought that Steve was just being his regular, idiotic, foolhardy self when it came to him. Steve telling him that he was capable of tenderness and human connection was like listening to his mother — of course he thought that, and he was biased as hell so it didn’t count. 

His heart thumped a little harder thinking of Steve — knowing how much he would have loved to see Bucky like this, wishing he could tell Steve and show him what he was learning. He looked at Steve sitting rigidly in his chair and closed his eyes.

Silent tears rolled down his cheeks. They weren’t the tears of the wracking grief from before, the kind that shook his frame and stole his breath and twisted his stomach into tight knots — the kind that cut their way out, rending him as they flowed. These were tears of sorrow, yes, but the edges were softened by the love and devotion that had preceded them, like a gentle rain or the first warm day of spring that brought a snow melt and a rush of clear water that coursed down an old worn path, clearing it of debris from the season before. 

Bucky’s breath caught loudly in his chest as something dislodged in the torrent, and Sam shifted, his face moving to Bucky’s shoulder and an arm wrapping around his chest. Held like that — being comforted in someone’s arms, just as he had comforted someone in his — Bucky felt truly human for the first time since before he had found himself on Zola’s table. And that was the dam that broke under the force of the floodwaters of his tears. 

Tears ran and dripped off his chin and he wrapped a hand around Sam. Sam raised his head, looking at Bucky’s face, taking in the tears, with a look of concern.

“Thank you,” Bucky whispered. 

Sam half smiled and looked curiously at Bucky. “For what?”

Bucky tried to think of what to say in reply. Various things for which he felt grateful to Sam rushed through his head. There was no way to explain it all, at least not without giving a speech or writing a novella. He smiled at Sam and lifted his hand to brush the pad of his thumb over Sam’s cheek as the reality of how much Sam meant to him finally hit.

“For everything,” he said with a watery smile.

*****

Whatever had come over Bucky the night before Sam didn’t know, but he couldn’t say that he objected. They had spent the evening cuddled on the sofa together until Steve’s last nightly alarm sounded. It hadn’t been easy getting through that routine again, but they did it, and then they fell into bed together.

It felt more permanent this time, not just something they were doing to get through a rough patch in their lives but something that were doing because they wanted to. Sam wasn’t sure what it meant, or what it would mean later, but just for the moment he was happy with whatever it was.

Still, in the darkness, curled beside someone like he had Steve, it was hard not to be sad. The metal arm aside, it almost was like Steve — so warm that the touch of his skin was bordering on uncomfortable — and Sam tried to fix his mind on the presence of Bucky, the reality of him, but Steve was never far away. 

He curled tighter around Bucky, holding on like this moment might suddenly evaporate, taking Bucky with it, and he closed his eyes. He could remember the chill of Afghan nights — alone in a barracks full of his teammates. He didn’t much get time to actually sleep in the same bed as Riley, but the nights after he had died had felt especially cold and empty. Even though he was curled warm and snug around Bucky, that sense of emptiness remained, the ache in his chest that came with thoughts of Steve mixing and blending and growing as it fused with its twin ache — the loss of Riley.

A gentle kiss landed on the crown of his head. It lingered for a moment and then Bucky pulled back.

“I know this isn’t the first time you’ve gone through this. I’m sorry,” Bucky said simply.

Sam nodded mechanically against Bucky and clenched his hands against Bucky’s bare skin. It had to be enough to hurt but Bucky just ran his hand over Sam’s back like it was nothing. 

This — with Bucky — was infinitely better than the emptiness of his cot in Afghanistan, no matter how much it hurt.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky and Sam met Geeta at the front of the building. She didn’t have much in the way of luggage, so they waved off the staff that had come to help, and gathered her things themselves. 

“It’s good to see you again, ma’am,” Sam said politely. “How was the trip?”

“Oh, your people are very accommodating,” she answered, her accent thick as she smoothed her sari down after the car ride.

“Good,” Sam replied with a smile.

She reached up, and it was quite a reach as she was a small little woman, and put her hand on Bucky’s left shoulder, squeezing gently. Bucky knew she had to feel the junction where the metal plates met flesh but her face showed no unease, instead smiling softly.

“And how are you, Mr. Barnes? You’re awfully quiet,” she said.

Bucky smiled, a bit forced, but Geeta either didn’t mind or didn’t notice as they started walking inside. “I’m alright,” he answered.

“Yes, this is a big change. I understand,” she replied, sounding like she understood the significance of the situation. 

Bucky assumed that she did, of course, at least to some degree. Bruce had hand picked three candidates, and then brought them to the Compound for Sam and Bucky to interview. Once the pool was narrowed to just Geeta, she was hired and thoroughly briefed on the situation. She couldn’t know exactly what all of this meant to Bucky, but common sense and observation was probably enough for her to know that it weighed heavily on him. 

They helped her get her things to her room, and then took her to meet Steve who was standing stiffly facing a window where Bucky had put him before they went out to meet her. She approached without hesitation and watched for only a moment before turning back to them. 

“You had mentioned a tour of the areas for which I have clearance, shall we bring him along?” Geeta asked.

Bucky still, after all this time, still held the stone, and Sam nodded at him to coax him along. Bucky swallowed and instructed Steve to come with them. He felt disconnected from the proceedings, like it was happening but he wasn’t really there. 

He didn't want to think about handing Steve over like a possession. He didn't want to think about how he was giving up on Steve, when Steve had never in his life given up on Bucky. The prospect of handing the stone over to this woman, no matter how well vetted, felt like the worst kind of failure. So it was easier just not to think at all.

He knew what his therapist would call it — dissociation — but it wasn’t like the bad spells he’d had when Steve had first been bound. He knew where he was, he just wasn’t really in his body for it. Bucky just floated along, absently existing and halfway forming thoughts, until Sam touched his arm. They were standing outside the quarters that they had given to Geeta, but she wasn’t with them.

“Bucky, can you hear me?” Sam asked, worry evident in his voice.

Bucky blinked, still not quite connected to reality, but a little closer to his body than he was a few moments before. “I, uh, yeah, I can hear you.”

Sam nodded, running his hand firmly up and down length of Bucky’s right arm. “You checked out on us a while back.”

Bucky nodded, but it felt clumsy, his body still not quite connected.

“Come on, Steve’s alarm went off a couple minutes ago. Let’s go get him to the bathroom and then head back to our quarters to rest,” Sam suggested as he gently herded Bucky in the direction that he wanted him to go.

Bucky followed along and helped get them through the day by force of will and the ease of well-established routines. By the afternoon, the worst of the dissociative fit had gone, though it left him uneasy and tired. He leaned heavily on Sam when they had moments alone and Sam ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair. 

He leaned into the touch as he tried to steady himself for what he knew was coming. Tomorrow they would give Geeta the stone that held everything that was Steve, and she would, under supervision, begin to learn to be his caretaker. It felt like the very last thing, like when someone died and then after the funeral they had to go clean out their house and sort through their things, letting go of the last physical reminders of them. 

Geeta joined them for dinner in the mess hall and smiled tenderly when Bucky managed a bit of small talk. She had been a doctor for many years before her retirement, Bucky knew. His problems, or at least the symptoms that came with those problems, we hardly anything new to her he realized. But she made no comment on his condition, instead asking after Steve and what he had liked before. 

That hurt, but it was easier to talk about. It was familiar territory and he told her about his art, how he painted murals for the WPA and all the little sketchbooks he kept. He told her about his taste in books and how his favorite time of year had always been spring — warm enough he probably wouldn’t get the flu or pneumonia, but not yet polio season. 

She listened attentively and when Bucky was done, Sam carefully steered the conversation to her. Geeta talked about her children, all grown and moved away. Her husband had died in the preceding years and retirement hadn’t suited her as well as she’d predicted. Thus, she found herself there; a new adventure but a much less fast paced one. Plus, she confided, one of her sons lived in Albany and moving to the Compound put her much closer than she had been in Chicago. 

Something about her demeanor was calming, Bucky realized. By the end of their meal the last of the sensation of floating just above his own head had vanished, and he was relaxed enough to enjoy the walk that they took around the Compound. A walking path wound around one of the smaller ponds that adjoined the main cluster of buildings, and they explored slowly in the darkness. 

They were walking in silence, the conversation having lapsed several minutes before, when apropos of nothing Geeta said, “You know, I may be older and from a more conservative upbringing, but I will not judge you two for holding hands when you so clearly want to.”

A laugh seemed to be startled out of Sam, and Bucky flushed for what he thought might be the first time in decades. Before he could think of a witty reply, Sam snagged his hand and gripped it firmly in his own. 

“There now,” she said, clearly delighted in her correct interpretation of their relationship. “How long have you two been together?”

Sam and Bucky looked at each other for a moment. Bucky wondered if Sam was trying to parse the same thing he was — namely, what were they to each other. 

“We, uh, we were just friends when this happened to Steve,” Bucky answered.

“Three months is a long time to spend together doing heavy work such as this,” she said sagely.

She fell silent again and neither Sam nor himself said more, but Bucky still thought about it. They weren’t dating like people seemed to date these days, but they were certainly more than nothing. In the past two and a half weeks since Sokovia, they had made whatever their relationship was much more solid. Bucky had gotten up one morning to Sam shoving his socks and underwear into one of the unused drawers in the dresser in Bucky’s room, now apparently _their_ room. He didn’t comment, but it felt good to know that Sam expected to continue sleeping next to Bucky for the foreseeable future.

They had also moved Steve to his own quarters away from them. It wasn’t far — for safety reasons — and even then he really only went there when it was time for him to sleep. Still, it was enough to let them begin to live apart from Steve, to find a life that didn’t ebb and flow around his presence. Interestingly, the move hadn’t left Bucky with a feeling an emptiness in their quarters, the emptiness had come along with Steve’s silence. Instead, the move was just more of the slipping away that Bucky had been feeling since the team came back from Sokovia, hands empty. Like giving away well cared for plants to relatives or putting boxes of old Christmas cards out by the curb once the house was finally cleaned out after the memorial service, it was another small exit of Steve from their lives.

Sam’s hand shifted in his grip and then re-tightened around his hand. Bucky knew the morning would be hard, but after dinner and conversation with Geeta, he no longer felt unready. Gripping back, he took a sidelong glance at Steve’s silently walking form. The urge to reach out and touch was there, but he ignored it for the feel of Sam’s hand in his.

*****

After Bucky’s trouble with Geeta on the first day that she moved in, Sam had expected for the actual handing off of the stone to be much more fraught with difficulties than it actually was. It had surprised him when Bucky had handed her the stone without hesitation. It was surprise enough that he skipped right over the emotions he might have had about the exchange altogether, too focused on Bucky to dwell on his own grief.

Instead, they had an amiable, if quiet, morning helping Geeta set up the necessary alarms on her work phone and discussing exercise and dietary needs. She showed no aversion to any of Steve’s more hands-on hygiene needs save for scrupulously washing her hands after the fact, more an artifact of years as a doctor than anything else, Sam guessed. 

Lunch and the afternoon followed in much the same manner, and Geeta retired to her quarters after dinner. She said that she wanted to condense her notes from the day and make a chart of some kind. Sam appreciated the initiative and they gladly bade her a good night. After so much talking, the rest of their evening was substantially quieter and they turned in as soon as Steve was put to bed. Overall, though, the day was good and uneventful, if exhausting. 

The days that followed were the ones that taxed Sam, or more accurately those were the days that taxed Bucky which in turn taxed Sam. By the end of the fourth day they were leaving Steve with Geeta for several hours at a stretch, but they stayed in the Compound, easily reachable by phone at a moment’s notice. 

It was a new stress, one Bucky didn’t handle as well as Sam knew he had hoped.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Sam asked a week after Geeta arrived. 

It was afternoon and they had finished throwing some pots a little while earlier, though some of the spray from the wheel had left white dots on their shirts which they neglected to change. But they were out walking in the forest trails that the security teams used to patrol the perimeter and since it was a balmy afternoon summer it made sense to be out in dirty shirts as they quickly sweat through their clothing.

Bucky trudged on and Sam waited for Bucky’s response. Eventually they came around the back of the facility near where the walking path ran alongside the nearest pond. There was a large boulder nestled back far enough into the trees that it couldn’t be seen from the Compound, and Bucky hopped atop it with ease. He leaned over, holding out his left hand, and Sam took it as he tried to scramble up. Instead, Bucky lifted him with ease, and Sam clammored over to sit beside where Bucky had dropped to rest and look out over the water. He sat up straighter as Sam got settled and Sam waited for whatever he had to say.

“When I was the Soldier, I depended on the people around me. I needed what they gave me — orders, routine, medical care, food. I couldn’t care for myself on my own. I lost a lot of the basic everyday skills because I never used them, and after enough time in cryo and enough wipes, I forgot; the only things that stuck were the things I used regularly — guns, fighting, killing, taking orders, that’s all that was left after a while,” Bucky said softly.

Sam remembered when they first brought him in. They’d given him toiletries in his cell but Bucky had just stared at them, and after days of ignoring them someone had realized he just didn’t understand. It had crushed Steve, and frankly Sam, too. But one of the first orders of business had been to teach him basic hygiene. From there, he began to regain other skills more quickly, especially as his memories started to return.

It was an issue that they skirted around regularly in the first year or so after DC, but it was never explicitly discussed. Bucky had his psychologist, his neuropsychologist, his neurologist, his psychiatrist, and a whole host of other people up his ass all day. Sam wouldn’t want to talk about it any more than he had to either. Instead, they filled the gaps and moved on.

“It was scary as hell. I remember waking up somewhere I didn’t recognize, with people I’d never met and couldn’t understand, and they would do things to me — medical procedures most of which hurt, cold showers with hoses and brushes, combing my hair and brushing my teeth, sometimes one of them would even clean under my foreskin — it was nauseating and terrifying. My body was never my own. I never made choices. I couldn’t even conceive of a choice.

“I don’t know how aware Steve is in there. At first, I had hoped he could hear us, but now I hope he’s gone. Enduring something like this, it’s too much. I did it for seventy years and looking back I’m glad most of it was in cryo. Not a moment passed that wasn’t torture and pain. He’s been trapped like that for three months and it’ll go on forever unless something changes. It would be better if he weren’t aware, or maybe if he were just dead. It would be a mercy in comparison.”

Bucky fell silent and Sam swallowed hard. Sam had an idea of what had happened — a general outline, even some of the details here and there as they had become relevant in their lives — but he’d never asked Bucky how he felt about his time with HYDRA. The horror of it was everything that Sam had expected and more. 

He thought about Bucky’s assertion that Steve would be better off dead if he were still conscious, but he couldn’t think of a reply to that. He was still turning it over in his mind when Bucky started talking again.

“I really like Geeta. She’s a good person and I think she’ll treat Steve well. I wish my handlers had treated me like she treats him. It’s still hard to watch though. Doing it was one thing, something that tested me and made me think about the person they made me, but watching her I have to fight the urge to jump in and try to save Steve. Someone is touching him, ordering him around, cleaning his body, feeding him, exercising him, dictating when he wakes up and when he goes to bed — none of it with his consent. It feels the same as…” Bucky trails off, expression still and eyes steely. “Everything in me says Steve’s in trouble and that I have to stop her, but instead I have to let her do what she’s doing and it fucking sucks. It feels like I’ve handed him over to HYDRA. I know it’s not the same. It’s just so fucking hard to watch. I hate it, but I think I might be glad to be going when it’s time.”

Sam nodded and reached for the first therapists’ tool he could find: affirmation.

“That’s understandable. I’m getting to that point myself,” he said. 

Bucky nodded but said nothing, and Sam felt the need to fill the silence, to reply meaningfully to what amounted to Bucky baring his soul. He thought for a minute and then said, “I’m not gonna pretend to understand what that’s like. My experiences in war were very different. But that aside, I’ve seen how hard you fought, how hard you still fight, to overcome what they did to you, how every step of the way you’ve exceeded not just them, but also how most everyone else would behave in this situation, too. Don’t forget that in middle of your grief you were, and are, stronger than them.”

Sam paused and then added, “I don’t know if that helps or not.”

Bucky nodded without looking at Sam. “It does.”

A moment later Bucky’s fingers threaded through Sam’s and he gave a gentle tug, making Sam look up in surprise. There was smile on Bucky’s face, warm and almost entirely unguarded, and Sam felt compelled to smile back.

“Thank you,” Bucky said quietly.

A short laugh burst out of Sam. “You’re thanking me? I should be the one thanking you.”

Bucky’s smile grew and he snorted. “Clearly we have conflicting opinions.”

Sam chuckled again and leaned into Bucky, squeezing his fingers. “We’re a helluva pair aren’t we?”

“Sure are,” Bucky said. 

Sam noticed the smile droop a little and then leave altogether, and he understood what Bucky was going through. He’d gone through the same, more or less, when he and Steve had started fooling around. Everything that he lost with Riley had come back in agonizing clarity. And the small things couples say to each other, their easy way of being together, the gentle way Steve held Sam’s hand — all of it had cut like knives, each sign of affection picking open a wound Sam thought was healed. It was less excruciating as he settled into whatever this was with Bucky, as he reconnected to the part of himself that could love and be loved, despite the threat of pain. But even as he allowed himself to move on all over again, the loss of Steve was a still weeping wound. Eventually, Sam knew, it would scar over. There was something reassuring about knowing that this was a scar he and Bucky would share. 

They rested on the rock together, still holding hands, for another half hour before Bucky’s stomach began complaining for want of food. They both chuckled and slid off the rock to the forest floor below. Bucky relinked their fingers as they started walking and Sam affectionately bumped into Bucky’s side affectionately. 

Bucky smiled warmly, his face open and the slight reservations from earlier seemingly gone, and Sam felt his heart twist in his chest in way that felt nothing like grief. It was a conversation that they would have to have soon, but probably not today.

*****

As Bucky got ready for bed, his whole body itched restlessly. He dwelled on the feeling as he changed into his pajamas. Turning to look at Sam, shirtless and rustling through the drawers, the answer came to him.

With Steve, Bucky never had to initiate touch. Steve had always been so tactile, always wanting a point of contact. Ordinary moments were filled with touch when he was with Steve and Bucky never had to ask for it. For so long, there had been no kind touch for Bucky. As he reclaimed himself, his therapists threw around words like _touch-starved_. Steve had been the feast after the famine, but without him, Bucky discovered that this was a need that wasn’t being filled. 

With that in mind, he slid under the covers and hauled Sam halfway on top of him. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it helped him settle, tension slowly ebbing out of him.

Sam, for his part, seemed quite content to lay on Bucky, his cheek plastered against Bucky’s bare chest, a hand gently stroking the skin of his stomach. 

“Where do we want this to go?” he found himself asking. “Between you and me, I mean.”

Sam twitched where he lay on Bucky and the stroking paused for a moment. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it myself, but I didn’t know how you felt.”

“I think I’d like to try us out,” he said finally. Maybe it should have felt like a betrayal, to come to this so quickly after losing Steve. But Steve had cared for Sam, too. He would understand. 

Sam nodded, his cheek stuck to Bucky’s skin even as the rest of his head moved. “Yeah, I’d like that, too.”

Bucky’s stomach swooped low in his belly and his heart clenched, beating faster. Sam chuckled.

“I take it you’re excited?” he asked playfully.

Bucky shoved him. “Shut up,” he said pretending to be annoyed.

Sam shifted to where he could look up at Bucky’s face. “Make me.”

In one swift motion, Bucky rolled Sam onto his back and pinned him, letting the weight of his high-density bones and muscles anchor Sam in place. Sam’s lips parted, looking up at him with obvious want and slowly, to allow Sam a chance to say no, Bucky lowered his face to Sam’s.

But Sam didn’t say no, instead lifting his head to meet Bucky’s. His lips parted eagerly and he nipped gently as Bucky’s lower lip. Slowly, they deepened the kiss, adding tongues and the gentle nips and scrapes of teeth, and gently rocking their hips together. 

It seemed to go on both for an hour and no time at all, but before Bucky was ready Sam was resting his head back onto the pillow and looking up at him with a soft smile. Bucky took the cue and rolled off, lying again on his back next to Sam. 

“I could get used to that,” Sam said.

Bucky turned to face him only to see a very pleased smirk plastered on Sam’s face. “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve had better,” Bucky teased.

Sam snorted. “Oh please. I kissed Steve and while he was enthusiastic, he was terrible. Who did you kiss that was better?”

“Peggy Carter.”

Sam’s eyes went wide and he stared in disbelief. “Get the fuck out. I thought it was her and Steve back in the day?”

Bucky shrugged. “I mean that’s what it was mostly, but sometimes they were in the mood to share. Didn’t happen all that often.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Alright, fine. Whatever. You’ve had better. But I’m sure I can still blow your damn mind.”

“Oh, you can blow something alright,” Bucky said under his breath but still loud enough to be heard.

Sam punched him in the arm. “You wish. Turn out the fucking light and let’s go to sleep.”

Bucky chuckled and complied. Sam immediately snuggled in close alongside him.

“Night, asshole,” Sam muttered.

“Night, bird-brains,” Bucky replied, pulling him tighter and feeling Sam squirm a little closer.

This is what Sam had told him — the grief never left, but he found ways to remember Steve and to move on. It was bittersweet, but the bitterness wasn’t what he had expected. He had expected the anger to stay forever, the way he was still angry about HYDRA that hadn’t lessened in any way, the rage more than he could contain some days. But this was different. This was two sides of the same coin — like hope and fear, bravery and terror. It was love that came from loss in the same way that you couldn’t have hope or bravery without first being scared. It was taking everything that Bucky had learned about love with Steve and turning it into something new with someone new. It still held all the old memories and patterns of Steve, but the new memories were good things, too. And so he had pain and happiness at once. 

He stroked Sam’s flank and took several deep breaths. The potential was terrifying and the threat of loss was ever present, especially given their occupation. Still, Bucky knew that trying was still far superior to not trying. He closed his eyes, Sam’s gorgeous face still lingering in his eyes, and did his best to go to sleep without focusing on the potential futures. The present was good and for right then it was enough.

*****

Another week passed and Geeta began to take over entirely as caretaker, Sam and Bucky only answering questions every now and then. At the same time, they began to plan their move back to the Tower and away from Steve. Spending their days away from him almost entirely shifted something in them and they began to laugh more, pulling closer. The grief remained, but it was less sharp than if they were facing it alone.

In preparation, they also started joining training drills with the personnel at the Compound. Bucky handed out shooting tips like a Oprah handed out cars, and Sam put his wings back on again. It was different this time, what with Steve being the reason he took them up again in the first place, but it still felt good to shoot up into the air and leave the world behind. He whooped and hollered, pushing both himself and his gear to their limits. 

Before too long, he was almost excited to head back out into the field again. The holding pattern from before, the months of leading an empty shell of a person around, was over and Sam was eager to get away from the every day horror of that existence. 

Nat came out to meet with them, setting up plans and going over the latest intel and upcoming missions. 

“You should take a short vacation, just a weekend or something, before you dive back into field work,” Nat suggested over lunch.

Sam looked at Bucky. It was a good suggestion if he’d ever heard one. He hadn’t had any real time off since before DC and Bucky hadn’t had time off ever in his life. 

“Yeah, sounds good,” he answered for the both of them.

Bucky nodded his agreement and Nat informed them that she had already set up transportation to Manhattan for the weekend, pushing a flight itinerary across the table at them. The jet was leaving at ten in the morning on Saturday, conveniently headed for Stark Tower. Even more conveniently, there was space on the manifest for two passengers. 

Sam laughed and shook his head, taking the papers in his hands. Bucky just winked and went back to his sandwich.

*****

Sam had taken very little effort to corral. Tomorrow was going to be the beginning of their vacation. They hadn’t really made any solid plans. There were plenty of things to do and see in New York, but they had opted to just do whatever they felt like when they got there. Planning felt constricting to Bucky, everything about life had been planned down to the minute for the last few months. This would be a vacation from timetables, too.

Sam kicked off his shoes and peeled out of his tac clothes in their bedroom while Bucky got out some beer and the rest of the Asgardian mead that had been Steve’s. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore and if he’d learned one thing from the Depression it was waste not, want not. Thor would probably declare it blasphemy if he knew, but Bucky decided it would probably be best with coke which he also set out on the table. This was a time for revels, and by god he wasn’t gonna have to sip at alcohol that tasted like the piss of Asgardian war horses if he didn’t have to.

The shower came on in their bathroom and Bucky followed its siren call. He was sweaty and gross, and had gotten silt and algae from the pond where they did water combat in all his crevices. It was a smell and a sensation that he was eager to remove. 

Sam was never long in the shower and Bucky was waiting against the counter in the bathroom when Sam stepped out. Sam rubbed the towel over his face and gave Bucky a long look before he finished drying off and stepped out, motioning to Bucky to take his place. Stepping in, Bucky looked over his shoulder, getting his own eyeful of Sam’s fantastic ass and catching Sam watching him in the mirror with a knowing smirk. 

Bucky pulled the shower curtain closed and after scouring himself thoroughly, turned the water all the way to cold. He was relatively sure that tonight would have a happy ending, but he just needed to convince his body to wait. 

After five minutes in the ice cold water, or as cold as the water got in the summer, his blood flow had returned to its normally scheduled routes and he turned off the water altogether. Sam was waiting, halfway into his first beer and watching basketball, when Bucky made his way out the the living room.

He poured himself some mead and coke, took a drink, and grimaced. Coke was apparently too mortal to counter the awful flavor of the mead. Slightly disappointed, he sat next to Sam who turned the channel to Hell’s Kitchen. 

Bucky slung his arm around Sam and Sam scooted in closer, leaning his head towards Bucky just enough for his cheek to touch Bucky’s bare shoulder. He pulled Sam closed and dropped a light kiss to the crown of his head feeling the warmth of his scalp just under his short hair. Sam hummed a contented little sound and finished the last of his beer.

“Want another?” Bucky asked.

Sam shrugged against him. “Maybe later. I’m comfortable right now.”

Bucky smiled, pleased and comfortable himself. But as the show went on one of the guys was so arrogant and abrasive to the other contestants that the buzz Bucky had been working up to simply soured in his stomach.

“Can we watch something else?” he finally blurted out, unable to tolerate any more of the name calling and yelling.

Sam clicked off the TV immediately. “Thank god. I thought you were watching it, but that guy had me ready to deck him.”

“No shit,” Bucky agreed, and threw back the rest of his drink.

“I’m really not feeling TV right now,” Sam stated matter-of-factly.

Bucky looked down at Sam who seemed to be waiting on something. “What are you feeling?” he asked curiously, though he had a decent idea.

Sam smiled at Bucky. “I’d like to be feeling you.”

Bucky grinned and leaned in for a kiss. Sam tasted like cheap beer and tacos, which had been what was served in the mess for dinner. Bucky was glad he was wearing gym shorts this time, because otherwise they would have been instantly too tight for comfort. The other upside became apparent a minute or so later when Sam pressed and rubbed the heel of his hand over the obvious bulge in Bucky’s shorts.

Bucky groaned long and low, trying and failing not to roll his hips up into the stimulation.

“Bed,” he growled, pulling Sam in for another biting kiss before standing and practically dragging Sam down the hall. 

The last few days — running together, working out together, and then grappling during drills — it had been building to this bit by bit. The long looks, the performative stretches and flexing, and over-long “accidental” caresses in grappling — he knew that Sam wanted this as much as he did, maybe more.

He shucked his shorts, the entirety of what he was wearing, as he pushed Sam back on the bed. Sam went easily, looking pleased as punch to be on his back on the bed with Bucky crawling after him. 

“How’d you want to feel me?” he breathed as he dipped his head to Sam’s chest, slowly dragging teeth and then his tongue over Sam’s right nipple.

Sam gasped and arched his back. “I want you in me,” he finally groaned out as Bucky switched sides.

Bucky and Steve hadn’t exactly gotten around to that back before the war, and things with Steve had only really started to pick back up since DC in the couple months before everything went to hell. Still, Sam clearly knew what he wanted and Bucky wasn’t going to be the guy to ruin the mood.

“Show what you want me to do,” Bucky said.

Sam nodded, seeming to understand the implications of Bucky’s statement and pointed to the bed stand. “Lube,” he directed simply.

He was rummaging through the nightstand drawer when Sam said, “Are you like Steve? Having more than one in the chamber I mean?”

Bucky paused and looked back. “Yeah. Why?”

“Well, I got plans for the first one,” Sam said.

Bucky snagged the lube and leaned back over Sam. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, pushing at Bucky’s shoulders. “Turn over on your back.”

Bucky chucked the lube onto a pillow and rolled over, letting Sam slide out, and took his place.

“Don’t compare me to Peggy, alright? I know I’m better at this than she was,” Sam said glaring. 

Bucky laughed. Ever since their first kiss, Sam constantly ribbed Bucky asking if he was better than Peggy or Steve yet. Or did Bucky have some French girl from the war he’d like to bring up as well? It was running joke that served to lessen the sting of their collective losses while also making both of them laugh. 

Somehow, Sam managed to continue glaring at Bucky even as his mouth closed over Bucky’s dick, his tongue laving the underside of the head, right under the last little bit of foreskin that hadn’t pulled all the way back yet. Bucky gasped and bucked, but even the surprise of Bucky’s dick pushing farther into Sam’s mouth didn’t lessen the glare, if anything it intensified it, and Bucky started laughing as he moaned.

“Come on, cut it out,” he whined. “You’re gonna make this weird. Just be sexy or something.”

He felt Sam laugh around him which sent buzzing along the length of his shaft. His eyes shut and he groaned again, fisting the covers in his hands. 

The first orgasm was always quick, or at least quicker than the next, and he came after only a couple of minutes. Sam was good, Bucky wouldn’t argue that, and even with the warning he swallowed it all down and sucked him dry, leaving him whimpering and shaking on the bed. 

Sam flopped down on the bed next to Bucky and began to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Slowly, Bucky dragged his eyes open. Sam looked pleased with himself, but also happy and that made him happy too. They stared at each other, the sappiness of the moment apparent to Bucky, but he didn’t much feel like stopping.

Sam on the other hand, must be done with that, because the sweet smile slowly morphed into a mischievous one and he said, “So are you gonna fuck me or are we gonna lay here all night making eyes at one another?”

In one fluid motion, Bucky grabbed Sam and planted him firmly underneath himself flat on the bed. 

“If you want it so bad, you better spread those pretty legs of yours,” he ordered grabbing the lube. 

Sam grinned, planting his feet wide apart on the bed, and Bucky’s dick rallied for the second round. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice.”

As Bucky pressed a finger into Sam and chased that smile for another kiss, he thought that this was something he could get used to, or at least he would like to die trying.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's hover text for the one translation in the chapter. Also, the translation is available in the end notes for my pals on mobile. Cheers.

Sam woke early, but he stayed in bed beside Bucky, not trying to rush the day. It was their day off. Together. They had needed this for weeks, months. 

Bucky shifted in the bed and Sam looked over to watch him run his fingers through his severe case of bedhead. For all that losing Steve had hurt them both, shit it still hurt, Sam was glad to have this time with Bucky. 

“Whatcha doing awake, Sam?” Bucky said with his eyes still closed and a lazy smile. “Early bird trying to get the worm?”

Sam rolled his eyes fondly. “Not something I eat if I can help it.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You ate the hell out of it last night,” Bucky shot back.

Sam choked on a laugh. “Man, how do you make a blowjob sound that nasty? What the fuck?”

Bucky laughed, full throated and light, and rolled over, partially pinning Sam. His tangled hair hung around his face and he smiled down at Sam. “It was an amazing blowjob, Sam. I’m grateful that you chose to give it to me instead of some other asshole.”

Sam smiled and brushed the hair back behind one of Bucky’s ears. “Speaking of assholes-”

“What? Yours sore? I’d hate to be damaging you so early in our relationship. I’ve got plans for that asshole,” Bucky said with sultry smile. The smile didn’t really seem all that sultry though, his eyes were crinkled with mirth at the corners.

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that. No, I was gonna say- ” Sam shot back.

Bucky’s right knee wriggled in between Sam’s, moving up enough to rub against the remainder of Sam’s hard-on. 

“Jesus, Barnes. I’m not enhanced. Christ, give me at least twelve hours,” he moaned. The complaint went unheeded as he bucked his hips to get more friction against the proffered knee. Finally, though he was definitely interested in the proceedings, the tenderness of the night before won out, and Sam gently pushed back against Bucky. Bucky immediately took the hint and backed off, laying slow, gentle kisses on Sam’s lips instead.

Sam wanted to wake up like this every morning until he died — still fucked out from the night before and still in bed with the man he loved. This was the shit he wanted with Riley and Steve, but had never gotten to have. That thought left a physical pain in his chest, but the devotion and love and eagerness in Bucky’s kisses helped to take the edge off long enough for him to forget, at least for the moment. 

Slowly, Bucky pulled away and laid his head on Sam’s shoulder, his right hand splayed over Sam’s chest. 

“We got all day. We could just lay here,” Bucky suggested, knowing damn good and well that they had to be in the hangar at ten to ten.

Sam smiled. “I got something better in mind.”

Bucky gasped and pretended to be affronted, using his highest pitched lady voice. “Better than me? Why Samuel Thomas Wilson, I never.”

Sam pinched his back where his hand lay. “Man, shut the hell up. I wanna take you to meet my mama.”

The air in the room shifted and Bucky’s fingers tightened against Sam’s skin for just a moment before releasing. “I- yeah. I think I would like to meet your mama.”

He carded, or rather he tried to, card his fingers through Bucky’s matted tresses, and then settled for massaging the back of his head. “I told her about us. She’s excited.”

Sam could feel Bucky smile against his chest and pulled him closer. “Come on, I told her we’d grab takeout on our way over.”

“Sure thing, doll,” Bucky replied with a kiss to the cheek.

Sam laughed. “Oh don’t thank me yet. She’s not exactly gonna be subtle when she interrogates you.”

Bucky smiled. “I’ve survived worse.”

“So you say,” Sam shot back, but of all the interrogations he could be walking into Bucky wasn’t terribly worried.

*****

It almost amused Bucky to realize that he was nervous about the “meet the parents” ritual that every date eventually had to endure, not that Sam’s warnings had helped his anxiety. As they mounted the steps and his heart rate quickened, it hit him that he couldn’t offer the same to Sam. Sam knocked on the door to the brown brick row house and imagined images of his parents’ and sisters gravestones flashed through his mind before he pulled the lever hard and switched tracks with his train of thought. No reason to dwell on all that right then. Today he would get to meet Sam’s family, and that was plenty.

Without waiting for an answer, Sam opened the door and stepped inside, Bucky on his heels. 

“Mama, we’re here!” he shouted into the living room. Bucky looked around at the garish curtains with large, bulky prints and the weird 70s wallpaper that seemed, in most places, to only come in shades of brown.

A flurry of movement from the kitchen and a smaller old woman, with white-streaked black hair hurried into the living room. “Samuel! Give me a hug, boy.”

Sam swept her up in his arms, kissing her on the cheek. A flare of grief sliced through Bucky and this time he couldn’t quite steer away from the hurt that bubbled up. His parents were dead and buried along with his sisters and some of their children, before he ever got back. He imagined taking up Becca and Sarah and little Winnie in his arms again and had to blink back the tears. He refocused his thoughts on the decor in the house, the gaudy colors of the untarnished 70s design sufficiently jarring to pull him back enough that he avoided any embarrassing emotional displays. 

“Samuel Thomas Wilson, did you finally bring home that boy you been talking about?” exclaimed Darlene Wilson as she pulled Sam in for a hug. 

“I did. Mama, meet Bucky. Bucky this is my mama, Darlene.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Bucky said with his best smile.

Darlene blushed, just the slightest hint of red darkening her skin. “Oh and manners too! Mmm. Well, I’m glad to finally meet you too. Samuel here says that you can out eat three or four grown men so I whipped up a little something. I hope you like southern cooking.”

“Southern?” asked Bucky.

“Mm hmm, I moved up here when I got pregnant with Samuel. Didn’t want my children growing up in Mississippi.”

“Well, whatever you’re making smells amazing. I’ll eat as much as you give me,” Bucky declared.

“Good. I don’t like picky eaters. Now tell me about yourself,” Darlene demanded as they followed her to the kitchen. 

They sat at the table while Darlene went back to stirring something on the stove. Bucky realized, rather suddenly, that he hadn’t ever had to go through this meeting the parents ritual before. Back in the day everyone already knew him, there wasn’t a mother or father that he had to introduce himself to. He wondered what he should offer but decided to go with blunt honesty.

“Well, ma’am, I’m not sure what you want to know.”

“Mmm, are you the one that my boy has been living with with that Steve Rogers?”

Sam’s mouth went tight with grief at the memory and Bucky laid his hand over Sam’s and squeezed gently. Bucky had thought maybe Sam might say something to his mother at least, about Steve, but apparently he really hadn’t. She couldn’t know that what was clearly a joke — because of course she knew who Bucky was — was actually a knife to both their hearts.

“I am,” Bucky answered smoothly, trying to paper over the hurt for the both of them.

Darlene smiled slyly. “You got a thing for these white boys doncha?”

“Mama, this is the second white boy I’ve brought home. It’s not a trend yet,” Sam argued.

“You only need two data points to make a line, son. I learned that helping you with your homework, you remember?”

“Yeah, Mama. I remember.”

“Don’t you ‘yeah’ me boy. Your man says ma’am about every sentence. You try that. So Bucky, what’s your given name?”

“James Buchanan Barnes, ma’am.” He knew that Darlene had to know at least some of this information — whether by word of mouth, news, or just Sam. But Bucky also wanted to give Darlene the truth, to show her that he was good and honest. It seemed a much taller order than the last time he’d talked to someone’s parents, nearly seventy-five ago. 

“And how old are you?”

Bucky rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. He wore the holoprojection watch Tony had made for ops and also to give Bucky some cover for normal life when he went out. Even so the servos whirred, giving away the deception for anyone close enough to hear. “Well, I turned 100 this year, if you go by the calendar, but I was frozen for a lot of that so I’m not sure. Maybe twenty nine or thirty in lived years.”

“Alright. And why does your arm make noises? I saw something on the news once about a metal arm but I don’ see no metal arm.”

To Bucky, those sounds would never mean anything other than HYDRA and a lifetime of being the Soldier. It was a reminder that he was a danger, as he had so often heard in the news and on the street, and the worry that he wouldn’t be worthy in Darlene’s eyes made his skin crawl. “Here I’ll show you,” he said unclipping the watch. “It’s high tech camo for my arm so I blend in. People tend to get a little nervous around me in public when they realize who I am, or used to be. No one thinks twice if I look like I have both arms.”

“Makes sense,” she assented.

Bucky let her stare for a moment while he moved the various joints around, and then he remembered Steve the first time he’d really looked at Bucky’s arm, the way he had treated it with as much care as he did the rest of Bucky. Still in lockdown after DC, it had been the first time that Bucky had felt like more than a thing. 

Sam was sitting there quietly, watching the interaction, and even though Bucky felt anxious, Sam betrayed no fear of his mother or her reaction to Bucky. Maybe, the trust he had showed Steve could be extended to Darlene too. Softly, he asked, “Do you want to touch it?”

Darlene set her spoon on the stove and moved forward a few steps and Bucky held out his hand. “The metal has an odd quality to it at first. It’s a vibranium alloy.”

“Can you feel with it?” Darlene asked as she drew her hand away to resume her stirring.

Bucky shrugged and tipped his head to the side. “Not like a normal arm. Only certain neurons were integrated so I can sense pressure and temperature, but not pain or other chemical signals. So I can press on something to feel the texture and temperature but the data is missing parts. I can also sense its orientation in space but without normal sensation. It’s hard to explain.”

“I guess the real question is whether or not you’re gonna break my nice tableware with that hand.”

Bucky laughed, a real, happy laugh and smiled at Sam who had not lied in the least about his mother’s investigative tactics.“No ma’am. I won’t break your tableware.”

“He says that but he broke a coffee mug about two months ago. Just crushed it,” Sam interjected.

“Sam, I had a flashback. I didn’t even remember I was holding it. Gimme a break,” Bucky protested sounding suddenly very Brooklyn.

“Oh, you gave it a break alright.”

“Come on man. The cup wasn’t even yours. You stole it from the common kitchen because it had little birds all over it. Chrissakes, I’ll buy you another.”

Sam and Bucky’s eyes were drawn up in laugh lines as they sniped back and forth with one another, the joy of Darlene’s seemingly nonplussed acceptance of Bucky’s differences radiating warmth through Bucky’s chest.

“I see why you like him,” Darlene finally said after they stopped the play fighting. “Reminds me of Riley.”

Sam bit his lower lip and nodded. “Yeah, they’re alike in some ways.”

His voice was bitter and Darlene put her hand on his shoulder. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, son. I just mean he’s good people. You two fit together.”

“Thanks, Mama.”

“So is my boy treating you right?” Darlene asked as she turned to switch off the burners before sitting down.

“Yes, ma’am. If anything, I don’t think I give him as much as he gives me. I’ve got no complaints about your son.”

Darlene hummed thoughtfully for a moment and then moved the apparent interrogation forward. “My boy says you like to cook.”

“I do. Nothing I make ever smells quite as good as this though,” he hedged.

“Mmm well he talks up your cooking regularly so it can’t be all that bad.”

Bucky smiled knowing that Sam did appreciate his efforts enough to tell his mother. “I’d love to make you dinner sometime, here or at our apartment. I cook all kinds of things but my best recipes are Irish, trying to remember from before. I’ll make a full Irish dinner; colcannon, stobach mairteoil, and marog aran for dessert.”

“That dessert stuff is good, Mama,” Sam concurred.

Darlene then steered the conversation through various themes: hobbies, recent movies, her feelings about “that idiot president,” the goings-on at her church, and finally dinner.

“I’m hungry. Samuel get the plates and help me. Bucky, sit there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky answered. Darlene might not give Bucky pushups for insubordination but he didn’t want to test her.

Sam plated up a decent sized first helping of everything and handed it to Bucky who smiled appreciatively at the portions. 

Darlene set a pitcher of sweet tea on the table and sat down as Sam brought her her plate. 

“Collards, chicken fried steak, purple hull peas, and cornbread,” she said as she pointed to the various foods on her plate.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Bucky said as he snagged his fork. Sam had just sat down at the table and Bucky was eager to dig in.

“And here I thought you had manners, Bucky. We gotta say grace. Your mama taught you that much didn’t she?” Darlene asked with one eyebrow raised.

Chastened Bucky laid his fork down and caught Sam smirking out of the corner of his eye. “Sorry ma’am. And yes, my ma did teach us kids to pray.”

“Then how about you do it?” Darlene pressed.

Bucky hadn’t dared even think about God since he shipped out to war and it hit him like a ton of bricks. He took a second to think about it, but the words wouldn’t come quite right. Every time he thought of saying grace over dinner, the words sounded wrong, backwards, muddled. They were slippery, like those memories that he knew were there but couldn’t quite grasp. 

Darlene reached across the table and touched his hand, drawing out of the tangled web he had fallen into in his mind. “Whatever you can manage will be fine. I reckon that the Lord will understand you well enough. Samuel and I will just follow along in our hearts.”

Darlene took Bucky’s hand in hers and extended the other to Sam. Sam held out his left hand to Bucky, completing the circle. It didn’t escape Bucky’s notice that Darlene had taken his left hand in hers with no compunction about it whatsoever. It was strange being accepted like this as a person outside of the semi-seclusion of the Tower.

Bucky closed his eyes and let go of the memory, no longer grasping at it. It didn’t work, not often, for memories of events, but when it was something he could _do_ , his body sometimes remembered for him. He breathed out, settling his mind and after a moment the old worn words came tumbling out like they did around the table when he was a child. When he finished, he half expected to open his eyes and be holding Ma and Winnie’s hands around table in their old house, almost able to smell the powder that his ma used. 

The fluorescent kitchen light from the fixture over the sink jarred Bucky a little when he opened his eyes. Darlene gave his hand a gentle squeeze, which he carefully returned, before letting go. Sam was staring at him, an odd look on his face.

“Was that Irish?” Sam asked quietly.

Bucky looked at the table for a second and then nodded. “Yeah, I think it was.” 

“Huh, I guess I just thought you had some secondhand words for food and stuff.”

Bucky picked his fork up again. “I think I might have forgotten. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.”

Sam nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Samuel Thomas Wilson you put that phone down when you’re at the dinner table,” Darlene exclaimed, pointing her fork threateningly.

“Hang on a sec, Mama. Oh there it is. They’ve got a Rosetta Stone for Irish. And….” he drew out the “and” and he poked his phone a few more times, “... now so do we.”

“Ís breá liom tú,” Bucky said with a smile, those words more easily accessible in his mind. He knew he’d said them hundreds, if not thousands, of times to his sisters and mother. 

Sam smiled at the unguarded affection in Bucky’s face, even though Bucky knew he couldn’t understand what he’d said, and stuffed his phone back in his pocket. They dug into dinner and Darlene, despite the warnings, was truly impressed that Bucky managed to put away three heaping plates in rapid succession.

“Where do you put it all?” she asked as he finally set down his fork. “I don’t mean what you do with it. Sam told me that you boys are enhanced or whatever they call it, but I mean where do you physically put all the food.”

Bucky smiled, and Sam noted that Bucky had smiled more over this dinner than he had in the past week. “Ma’am, I wonder the same thing on a daily basis. I honestly don’t know. I think our bodies just kind of figured it out.”

Darlene nodded. “Well you boys save room for dessert?”

“There’s always room for your pies, Mama,” Sam answered.

Darlene smiled warmly at her son and raised her eyebrows at Bucky. “What about you son?”

“Oh yes, ma’am.”

Darlene pulled a pie out of the fridge. She gave herself and Sam normal sized slices, an eighth each, but she gave Bucky nearly half.

 

After the first bite Bucky looked up in wonder. “This is the great. What is it?” he asked before shovelling in another bite.

“Sweet potato pie.”

“Can I have your recipe? I want to make this.”

“Of course you can baby,” she cooed.

Sam smirking knowingly. Bucky might be his, but he still knew how to work the ladies like none other and Darlene Wilson was his latest victim.

Sam cleared the table and went to rummage around in the hall closet. 

“Scattergories or Trivial Pursuit?” he called.

Darlene pursed her lips. “You know I like Scattergories. What about you Bucky?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never played either.”

“Scattergories it is,” she called back.

Sam brought the game to the table and Darlene set it up while Sam went looking for pens and paper. Darlene went over the instructions and gave Bucky a few examples. 

“You got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, then prepare to lose,” she told him.

Sam and Bucky laughed but Sam shook his head. “No, you don’t get it. We _will_ lose. I don’t know how exactly she does it but Sarah and I always lose.”

Nine rounds later and Bucky could see what Sam had meant. She trounced them both. 

“Well boys, it’s been fun, but my old bones need a nap. Why don’t you two turn on the TV and let that food settle a bit? I’m just gonna rest in my recliner over there.”

Sam and Bucky followed her to the living room and turned on the TV. Bucky waited until she had fallen asleep and silently slipped to the kitchen, Sam trailing close behind. In unspoken consensus they did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, took out the trash, and settled back in the living room on the sofa together before she woke up. 

While they waited Sam laid his head on Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky pressed his nose against Sam’s head. 

“Did Steve speak Irish too?”

Bucky shook his head. “Not really. He understood some but most of it he picked up with my folks. Sarah wanted him to fit in. He was a sick kid and the child of an immigrant, he didn’t need to be any more other than he already was. My folks were of the opposite mindset, my mother especially. She thought we were losing what made us who we were and she demanded that we learn. She’d paddle us if she caught us speaking English in the house. It’s funny really. My dad was only a second generation Irishman, his grandparents were from Dorset, so by our namesake we’re English but she was having none of that.”

Sam smiled. “Mama was like that. ‘Just because you live up north doesn’t mean that you have to talk like these people. You best have good southern manners, Samuel. Rude people don’t get nowhere in this life, boy.’”

Bucky laughed. “They don’t want us to lose who we are, the things that are important to them.”

“Yeah,” Sam murmured. 

“I’m glad you got that program. I think I want to practice my Irish. I want to learn about my heritage,” Bucky’s chest cramped. “It’s all I have left of them.”

Sam raised his head up and kissed Bucky gently. “Hey, have you ever looked them up?”

Bucky paused like something had just hit him, but he shook his head. “Nah, but Steve did. My sisters are all already dead.”

Sam could hear in his voice that he hadn’t actually thought of it, but calling him on it wouldn’t help. “I know baby but you had what, four of them? Surely you’ve got nieces and nephews. Don’t you want to meet them?”

Bucky looked wide eyed at Sam like he just hadn’t thought of it before. Sam figured that he honestly hadn’t if he’d also forgotten that he spoke another language. Their life wasn’t like that, with happy memories and family. Their lives and families consisted entirely of those who lived in the Tower and he knew that besides himself and Scott no one else ever looked back. There wasn’t anything to look back to in most cases. 

“Yeah, I wanna do that,” Bucky finally said. 

“I’ll talk to Tony, maybe he or Hill could set us up with some resources. Hell, we could do it ourselves if they stayed in the area.”

Darlene stirred in her chair and Sam and Bucky pretend to be very interested in the news. Of course most of the breaking news was actually days old but they did have the most up to date intelligence reports to plow through every afternoon so they’d read the spoilers. 

“You boys’ dinners settle well?” she asked after a couple of minutes of slowly waking up.

“Yes, ma’am” Bucky and Sam replied in unison.

“Mmm. So what plans have y’all got tonight? Do I need to make another feast for you boys?” she asked.

Sam smiled and took Bucky’s hand in his. “I think we can go get some take-out, save you the trouble, Mama.”

Darlene smiled at her son’s consideration and nodded. “You know I love that little Thai place we used to go to.”

Sam nodded, remembering how it was Gideon who had dragged Darlene there — against her better judgment — and subsequently gotten her hooked on Thai food. After Gideon had passed the little restaurant had been important to them for reasons other than their blindingly hot and delicious pad thai. 

“You up for a walk, Bucky? The restaurant isn’t far from here,” Sam said.

Bucky smiled and got up off the sofa. “Let’s go then.”

*****

Shortly after breakfast the next morning, Sam and Bucky said goodbye to Darlene. She made them promise to visit again soon and Bucky made Sam promise to bring him. He had thought that having Steve, who was as good as family even before the war, was enough, but he realized with Darlene that there was no substitute for either parents or home.

They had decided the night before to go to the planetarium and then the aquarium and so they spent the day gawking at strange marine animals and craning their necks during the show at the planetarium. For a few hours, Bucky lost himself in the wonders of the world and cosmos. There were so many things that he hadn’t even imagined, his sci-fi books from before the war didn’t even prepare him for the things he saw and heard. 

He was riding a high of learning and wonder, some intangible almost spiritual connection to the universe, when Sam dragged him to a street vendor that sold only funnel cakes. Suddenly, he was back at Coney Island with Steve. He almost laughed remembering poor Steve and his funnel-cake vomit covered shirt after he’d dragged Steve onto the Cyclone. 

“What’s gotcha smiling?” Sam asked, breaking the spell.

Bucky smiled ruefully. “Funnel cake reminding me of another time,” he answered, careful not to bring Steve into it enough to ruin their day.

Sam smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I understand. You tired yet, or you wanna check out one more thing?”

Bucky shrugged. “I’m game. Whatcha got in mind?”

Sam grinned. “The Sex Museum.”

“You trying to get me in the mood?” Bucky asked with a laugh.

“Maybe. Is it working?”

“I don’t think you need a museum for that.”

*****

Sam was pleased to note that the museum did work to that effect and he caught Bucky covertly trying to adjust himself several times during their tour. Of course, Sam had to do that too, but he was _already_ in the mood.

They grabbed take-out again for dinner and happily absconded to their long abandoned apartment to eat. The elevator had taken a long pause on the way up and Sam had been quick to thank JARVIS for his help in avoiding having to talk to anyone. 

It was weird being in the Tower again, everything felt off, familiar but somehow empty without Steve. But even though Sam knew Bucky felt it too, they said nothing about it. Instead, they ate quickly, as the day had been long and funnel cakes had done little to sustain them. They cleaned up their things from dinner, and with a little meaningful eye contact, a playful eyebrow wiggle, and a sultry smile, they made their way to Sam’s room, Bucky kicking the door shut behind them.

“You’re such a bastard, dragging me to that museum knowing that I wouldn’t have a chance to get my hands on you for hours,” Bucky growled as he heaved Sam onto the bed and climbed over him.

Sam chuckled, his voice already huskier. “I like you like this, all predatory and demanding.”

“Oh, do you? You sure you can handle that?” Bucky asked.

“Please,” Sam said. The implicit challenge in his voice made Bucky narrow his eyes, but instead of reply, Bucky snatched Sam’s hands, slamming them to the bed over his head and then gripping them both in his left hand. Sam flexed experimentally but his hands were held so fast that he couldn’t even open his fingers all the way. Bucky pressed harder, taking Sam’s movement as fighting. It was enough to hurt, but not to injure.

“I may not have known what I was up to Friday, but I do now and by god I’m gonna give it to you for all it’s worth,” Bucky said, his hair hanging down around his face and casting shadows over his features. His intensity reminded Sam of the Soldier — the single-minded focus and intent — but with the danger replaced with affection and lust. and Sam had to stifle a moan, his dick twitching at the promise of Bucky’s later ministrations.

“God, I hope you do,” Sam groaned.

“Where’s the lube, bird brains?”

Sam’s brain spun for a second, trying to recalibrate to the room he was in. “It’s, uh, it’s in the nightstand I think.”

Bucky glared and readjusted his grip on Sam’s wrists before reaching across the bed to the nightstand. The bottle of lube was the only thing Sam had ever put in that drawer which felt silly. Bucky had a gun, a couple spare clips, a box of ammo, some long forgotten paperbacks, and a roll of toilet paper in addition to the obligatory bottle of lube in his nightstand — at least that’s what Sam could remember off the top of his head from when he had gone digging around in there one day for the nail clippers that Bucky had borrowed and failed to return. 

“Spread ‘em,” Bucky ordered, with the authority of a Brooklynite telling someone to get the fuck off their front steps plus the added commanding tone of US Army Sergeant. 

Sam complied eagerly and was met with slick fingers, probing and pressing into him with very little lead-in. He moaned loudly, his hips bucking.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

“Oh, I plan to,” Bucky replied. “The soreness you were whining about Saturday is gonna be nothing compared to this.”

The promise of danger in Bucky’s words was undercut by the gentle smile on his face and the questioning look he gave Sam. 

“I don’t care if I can’t walk for a week,” Sam replied.

Bucky looked patently lecherous and his lips twisted up in a smile. “I’ll remind you of that tomorrow.”

Sam found he was looking forward to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ís breá liom tú: I love you


	9. Chapter 9

Waking up in the Tower Monday morning had been quiet. Even Tony had kept his mouth shut over breakfast. This was it. Geeta was taking over full-time now, and Sam and Bucky were coming back to the Tower permanently by the end of the day. 

They’d packed all their stuff into duffels and a couple of boxes before they’d left on their weekend vacation and now all that remained was to go get it. They could easily have it delivered but neither of them could leave without a final goodbye. Or semi-final since Steve wasn’t exactly going anywhere. 

So with short murmurs of “see you this afternoon” and “tell him hi for me” Sam and Bucky took a car from the garage and drove up to the Compound, four and a half hours away. 

They got back to the Tower in the evening, after the worst of rush hour had already passed. Geeta had been reading softly to Steve in Hindi when they had slipped silently into the rec room. Bucky had nearly had to leave again at the gentleness in her voice, the way she was clearly reading to Steve and not just reading aloud — she was doing her part not just keep him alive, but to keep him human when hope had run out. Bucky swiped at his eyes, grateful that she could do for Steve what he no longer could.

Sam’s hand had steadied him enough that when she reached the end of her reading and the closed the book, he was composed once more. They had exchanged pleasantries, and Bucky had hugged her thinking of his mother and Sarah and Darlene. She had simply held him in her small arms for as long as he wanted before letting him go with a gentle pat to the cheek. 

On the quiet ride up Bucky had thought of a thousand and one things he wanted to say to Steve, but standing in front of him, Sam and Geeta chatting in the hall to allow him a moment alone with Steve, Bucky couldn’t think of a single one. Tears ran silently down his face, his chest aching, and he leaned in to leave a gentle kiss in the middle of Steve’s forehead. Then he walked briskly away, not looking back, unable to face how the kiss, the touch, the goodbye, had passed over him with no effect at all.

Sam was only gone a moment with Steve, and then he and Bucky were saying goodbye to Geeta with promises to call her when they got back safely. They had gathered their things, and then they were gone, not even staying long enough to grab a free lunch in the mess hall.

Bucky stared at the boxes, set down immediately inside the door of their long abandoned apartment. It was real. Steve was gone. They were going on with their lives. He had felt prepared, like each step was the final one, but he didn’t realize that this was _that_ step until he took it, until the finality of it hit him like the impact from a concussion grenade. 

“It’s late,” Sam said quietly, apparently still standing next to Bucky where he’d stopped in the entryway.

“Yeah,” he agreed absently.

Sam’s hand slipped around his waist and settled at his opposite hip. “Come on. We’ll deal with the boxes in the morning.”

The boxes weren’t the issue, Bucky wanted to tell him. But then he realized that Sam knew that. Nodding, Bucky followed Sam’s lead until they were curled up under the covers, the weight of the blankets reassuring, even though he would be far too hot in a matter of minutes. Sam was nestled up behind him, his arms wrapped around Bucky’s chest. The boxes, at least the emotional ones, would be in the living room for a while yet, but when it came to put them away Sam would be there to do it with him.

*****

The gaps in their lives that they had long since papered over at the Compound were obvious again. The ebb and flow of their lives at the Tower still called for Steve, and Sam saw him in every corner of their lives — his art hung on the walls and even the fridge doors throughout the building. A gag gift coffee cup of Captain America here or a something Steve had given one of them there. His existence permeated their life, especially their apartment, where he had lived the most, and Sam found himself in the kitchen weeding out their collection of coffee cups to minimize the sting of opening the cabinet in the morning and seeing a piece of Steve sitting on the shelf.

Sometimes he cried into the boxes that he packed. Sometimes he laughed or smiled, and more often than not the ones that made him recall better times stayed where they were, bittersweet reminders of something gone but worth remembering. And, after nearly a month, there were four full boxes of Steve sitting on the floor in his room. 

But for all those moments of hurt, there were many more that were happy. Clint and Nat were laughing again, and even better, so was Bucky. Having walked this road before, Sam felt like he was managing well, and it heartened him to see his friends improving, too.

And speaking of improving, Sam himself had a definite swagger to his stride lately. Clint and Nat had certainly noticed and they were about as subtle in their joking as a flying brick. Nevertheless, Sam smiled through it all, and after a time Bucky did as well. They were happy together, made happier still by all the fantastic sex they were having — well, that and spending most of their free time with Sam’s mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nieces who called Bucky ‘Uncle.’ Watching Bucky melt under the combined gazes of a five year old and an eight year old might have been one of the highlights of Sam’s life. And after two months of putting himself back together, Sam slept better, ate better, and felt better than he had in longer than he could recall. 

Also, he was in love.

He’d fallen hard and fast for Riley, and to a lesser degree for Steve, so he recognized the signs when the same thing started to happen with Bucky. And he worried. So much of their relationship was built on shared grief and loss. But he also knew that much of it was built on trust, on intimacy, on their shared willingness to bend and move to accommodate each others’ needs. Those things in their truest forms came only from genuine desire, chemistry, and above all, maturity. 

After letting that stew and settle in his mind for nearly two weeks, Sam said exactly what he meant to say to Bucky when he least meant to say it.

They were in the kitchen. Bucky was chopping vegetables for their salad and Sam was tending the stove. They were quiet together, but Sam’s brain was still working overtime on the matter of love. 

“Hey, Bucky,” Sam said, suddenly gripped by the idea that waiting wasn’t going to change his feelings and that waiting to tell Bucky was just wasting precious time. “I love you.”

A small clang of metal followed by an awful screech sounded in the kitchen and Sam winced. The knife, having been irreparably damaged against Bucky’s left hand, landed in the garbage under the counter, and out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Bucky lean against the counter, watching him stir. 

His bravado and courage, his overwhelming desire to share that one thought, suddenly evaporated, replaced with the fear of rejection, or worse, humiliation. But Bucky didn’t laugh at Sam. Instead, after a moment of watching Sam stir the pot needlessly, he stepped forward, took the spoon from Sam’s hand, tossed it on the counter, and pulled him so that they were face-to-face.

“I love you, too,” Bucky stated flatly, and after a moment he added, “You’re just as stupid as Steve when it comes to stuff like this.”

Sam stared at him blankly for a moment before bursting out laughing and leaning forward for a kiss which was warmly and enthusiastically reciprocated. Sam looped his arms around Bucky’s neck and Bucky held Sam by the waist, his hands creeping up and down Sam’s sides and eventually under his shirt. The cold of Bucky’s left hand left goosebumps on Sam’s skin where he touched him, but Sam didn’t mind. 

“You’re burning dinner,” Bucky murmured against Sam’s lips. 

For a moment, Sam was too distracted with that little thing that Bucky was doing with his tongue, but then he realized what Bucky had said and jerked back, looking to the stove. Even in his haste he caught the little smirk on Bucky’s lips out of the corner of his eye.

“Shit!” Sam blurted out. 

Stirring it, the food was far less scorched than anticipated, and Sam’s initial frustration was tempered by Bucky’s obvious amusement. But by the time dinner was on the table, Sam’s frustration was entirely gone, replaced with the heady joy that came with not being rejected. Even if the sauce was a little acrid from the gentle scorching it got.

Bucky loved him, too. Not just as friends, but as something more. They had something. Maybe when he was younger he would have rushed to label it — boyfriend, lover, partner — but those labels meant less to him as time went on, and lightly kicking each other under the table while they ate spoke volumes more than any word ever could.

*****

Bucky rushed faster and faster through the corridors. There were at least twenty soldiers following him, another sixty-five on the surface outside the facility. He’d attracted enough attention to make the fight more manageable topside, but it wasn’t without risk. 

Outside, somewhere, Sam was with the surface team, flitting around in the sky and picking off combatants from farther away. The idea that he was somewhat safer was the only thing keeping Bucky from feeling complete desolation. After Steve, the thought of losing Sam was… He rounded a corner and shut down that thought altogether. It was a distraction only. 

The troop behind him was far enough behind him now that Bucky had time to slip into the subceiling and wait for them to pass before doubling back. He planted several directional charges on the nearest three load bearing piers and set the timers. He had three minutes to clear the facility. He could do it in less than half that. 

As he made it to the level just beneath the surface, his comm crackled to life. At first the yelling was jumbled and incoherent, made less intelligible by the fighting in the background. But in the midst of the regular chatter, there was Sam’s voice, repeatedly calling for him. 

“Bucky, come in. Bucky? Do you copy?” Sam repeatedly like a litany.

“I copy,” Bucky replied as the static abated enough for him to be heard.

“Thank god,” began Sam. “JARVIS just patched Geeta through. Something’s going on with Steve. She says he’s talking and non-compliant. We need to wrap this up and get back there to him ASAP.”

Adrenaline poured through every capillary in Bucky’s body, pushing him faster and faster up the stairs. His heart, which barely accelerated what most people considered exertion, now pounded in his chest and the sound of his breathing filled his ears. 

He burst through the doors on the ground level of what appeared to be a small barn nestled between a farmhouse and a grain silo. At least half the combatants who had remained topside were dead, incapacitated, or ziptied under the watchful eyes of a handful of SHIELD agents. The others were still fighting. 

Normally, Bucky would be concerned with the safety and well-being of his teammates. But right then, Sam’s words echoing in his head, Bucky was just annoyed and pissed. These idiot combatants stood in between him and finding out what in the hell was going on. A small, long-dead spark of hope flared in his chest before he set it aside along with his concern for Sam.

The moment Bucky had an open line of sight, he raised his rifle and opened fire. He didn’t spray the field, still careful of the dangers of friendly fire, but with the advantage of surprise, he took out six of the remaining combatants with no effort. After that, he began to take fire as well, some of the group breaking off and coming towards him. Bucky ran, luring the idiots a few hundred feet from the main fighting and then flanking them so that he could fire in their vicinity without having to take the time to settle in for every shot. It was a tactic that ate up ammo but produced more casualties while simultaneously not getting him killed from the danger of standing still and lining up shots. 

The little group of enemy fighters which had run after him had only totaled eight, but taking them out reduced the remaining combatants down to less than twenty. With the field so depopulated, the fight was over by the time that he made it back to the main group.

“Everyone clear the area,” Bucky shouted as he bounded up. “We’re thirty seconds and counting to detonation.”

Tony and Thor each snagged two of the higher ranking HYDRA thugs that were in zipties and flew clear of the blast radius. Sam snagged Clint and the Hulk grabbed Nat. Bucky just ran. He could outrun a truck for a short distance if the mood struck him and the mood was definitely upon him. He made the back of the jet as everyone else was loading in. The ground rumbled behind him and the jet lifted off as trees and boulders fell away behind him into the large pit that had opened up behind them where the facility had been previously.

“Damn, how many charges did you lay?” Clint asked.

Bucky shrugged. “Not that damn many. Maybe HYDRA needs to outsource their architectural design to someone with expertise.”

A few chuckles in the background met this comment but Bucky was uninterested, turning his attention to Sam. “What’s going on?” he asked, worry coloring his tone.

Sam shook his head. “JARVIS is patching me back through now. I told her were in combat and that we’d call back. I don’t know much.”

“Something wrong?” Tony asked, everyone listening intently for the answer.

“Geeta said something’s going on with Steve, that he’s defiant and talking. We’re not sure—”

Bucky’s stomach turned as the line connected and he held his breath in anticipation.


	10. Chapter 10

Steve nearly bounced out of his seat when Geeta’s phone chimed, and only manners kept him in his chair. 

“Ah, it’s Sam,” Geeta said softly as she picked up the phone and answered the call. Steve was almost annoyed at how calm she was, not snatching the phone off the table, not hurrying to answer it, not even perturbed at their situation — whatever their situation was exactly. 

“Thank you for calling me back, though you shouldn’t have answered if you were in active combat, Mr. Wilson. You’re not still in danger, are you?” Geeta asked, her voice soft — Steve was beginning to think it was always soft — but still laced with censure.

Steve heard chuckling from multiple people and then Sam’s voice cut through. “No, ma’am. We’re on our way back now. Can you fill us in?”

“How about you see for yourself? Steven?” she called and Steve leaned forward, taking the phone carefully out of her small hand.

“Sam?” he asked. There had been other questions, but his brain ground to halt before he managed to get them out. There were too many things wrong, too many things that felt like waking up from seventy years in the ice, and all the questions that Steve had been formulating fell away in the face of his desire for someone he knew to reassure him that he hadn’t slept away another lifetime.

“Hey, Steve. I’m here. You- you okay?” Sam asked, his voice hesitant and cracking.

“Yeah, I feel alright. Sam, what’s going on?” he asked, his brain catching up to his situation. “Geeta tried to tell me what happened but I’m not sure I understand.”

“Steve,” Sam said, and then he paused and took an audible breath. “Steve, so much has happened, but Geeta knows at least the more pertinent stuff. She can fill you in. We’re just leaving an op now and we’ve redirected to the Compound.”

“ETA?” Steve asked, hopefully.

Tony answered and Steve found himself relax a fraction to hear another friendly voice. “We’re on our way back from an op in Nebraska, of all the stupid places to build an underground facility. We’re trying not to disrupt air traffic so we’re not gunning it, but we can be at the Compound in under two and half hours. Can you sit tight that long?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Steve agreed. But as soon as the relief from someone coming to help grew, it faded as Steve began to wonder if he was the only one who’d been — whatever he’d been. “Where’s Bucky and Nat? Something didn’t happen to them, did it?” He’d heard Sam, Tony, a chuckle from Clint, Thor murmur something, and that left Nat and Bucky to be worried about, since Bruce couldn’t die.

“I’m here,” Nat said, her voice different and the emotion unfamiliar to Steve.

“Me too,” answered Bucky, his voice cracking as he spoke.

“Bucky, what’s wrong?” Steve asked earnestly.

“Nothing, Steve. Nothing is wrong. I’m just happy to hear your voice is all,” Bucky explained. 

There was a pause and Nat added softly, “We all are, Steve. We’ve missed you.”

It worried Steve a bit that everyone was so free with their emotions, that they would share like this. Something had to be, or had to have been, terribly wrong to provoke this. 

“How- how long was I gone?” he asked, and braced himself for having lost another seventy years, another lifetime.

“Almost five months,” Sam answered, his voice cracking too.

“That’s not that long. Why are you all crying?” Steve asked, relieved but also more confused than before. “What happened to me?”

“Steve, that’s a long, long story,” Tony said and he sounded tired even to Steve’s ears, more so than his usual “I’ve been on a coffee and engineering bender with six hours of sleep for the last four days” tone. 

“Yeah, alright,” Steve agreed. “But, uh, can you guys tell me about Geeta and what she’s doing here?”

“She’s, was, your caretaker, Steve,” Sam said gently. “She’s a really nice lady and she’s been taking care of you for about two months. I bet she’d like to get to know you.”

Steve could take a hint. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain to him what had happened over the phone. So he nodded and squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I can do that. See you guys soon?”

“Sure thing,” Sam answered and Steve disconnected the call.

He handed the phone to Geeta and leaned back in his chair. Trying to absorb the idea that he’d been asleep, after a fashion, for the past five months. It was a lot, but thankfully not quite as overwhelming as Times Square. 

A small hand closed over the top of his where he still rested it on the coffee table next to him.

“You have a great many things to confront,” Geeta said softly. “How about we go for a walk? It’s a bit hot this time of year, though still nothing quite like Mumbai. We can talk and it will pass the time faster until your friends are here.”

Steve looked at her a moment and then nodded absently, not really agreeing or disagreeing. Sam and the others wouldn’t have left him in her care if she weren’t trustworthy, competent, and of good character. There were always people SHIELD and Tony’s people could dredge up to do the work they needed. If she weren’t the best, he knew she wouldn’t be there. Having made up his mind, he stood up and held out the crook of his elbow to the older woman, who smiled and rose to join him.

Their walk was cut short by the appearance of Dr. Strange. Steve had met him a couple of times, but they were no more than acquaintances. 

“Hello,” Strange said as he met them on the walking trail, seemingly coming from nowhere.

Instinctively, Steve put Geeta behind him before realizing who was in front of him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Oh, I just wanted to check and make sure you were doing alright, reintegrating into your physical body after having been stuck in that gem for so long. Which: how are you doing?” Strange asked casually.

Steve stared back and blinked. “Fine, I think,” he answered hesitantly.

“Great!” Strange exclaimed with a smile. “If you don’t mind I have some questions, and I’m sure you do as well. Might I join you on your walk?”

After a moment of stunned silence, Geeta stepped around Steve and patted his arm. “Yes, I think it might be good for you to join us. My name is Geeta, and you would be?”

“Pardon my manners, ma’am. I’m Dr. Stephen Strange,” the sorcerer said, genuflecting slightly. 

“Excellent, well, let us walk,” Geeta said and almost like it was a habit, Steve found himself doing as she asked.

*****

By the time that the jet touched down at the Compound, Strange had explained a great deal about magic and sorcery and what had happened to Steve. It was disconcerting to say the least, but besides all that, Steve felt like the things that mattered to him weren’t part of that explanation. 

The rest of the team had given up on him, his situation declared hopeless. They had moved on and moved away, at least from Geeta’s telling of it, and he had been placed in long term care with her at the Compound. 

They had grieved him, he realized. They had mourned him and then picked up what was left and gone back to the fight. He wasn’t the first person any of them had lost to war. They were doing what they had to, but it also meant that not everything would be the same. Watching the jet coast up to the hangar, Steve’s stomach went cold.

There was a split second, when the aft cargo bay door was opening, before he could see their faces, where Steve wondered if they’d grieved him out of their lives enough that he wasn’t needed anymore. Sure he’d be needed on the team, any and all were needed to take down HYDRA, especially after DC, but they might not need _him_ anymore. He might not fit into the group, might be an outsider, might not be—-

The door opened and Bucky bounded out of the jet towards Steve. He wasn’t running full tilt, but he was running all the same. He scooped Steve up in his arms and clung, his face buried in Steve’s shoulder.

“Hey, Buck. Hey, I’m here. I got you, pal,” Steve soothed, running a hand over Bucky’s back and another through his hair. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t back you up. This never should have happened,” Bucky rasped.

Steve’s brow furrowed. “Hey, I ran off on my own again. That’s not on you. And besides, you were guarding Clint and Nat while they worked. That was important.”

Bucky pulled back and looked at Steve, and for a moment Steve thought he was going to say something, but the rest of the team was within earshot and Bucky just shook his head. It worried Steve, but at the same time he knew that if Bucky felt that it was important he’d be hearing about it later anyway. 

Any further worry was abruptly cut off by the appearance of Sam who crowded his way in for a hug.

“You stupid son of a bitch. Stop getting yourself hurt,” Sam muttered.

Steve chuckled. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

Sam’s response was drowned out by Thor and Clint shouting competing things at him at once, and then he was wrapped in everyone’s arms, passed around for hugs and happy words.

It was a lot. It wasn’t as much as waking up and bolting into Times Square like a startled horse, but it was still a lot. Though as far as waking up from losing portions of his life went, this was the more preferable option. 

Once the general hubbub of greetings died down and everyone had gotten their clearly much needed hugs, Steve and the group migrated towards the locker room. 

“We thought you were stuck forever,” Clint said. “You know, inside that funny little rock.”

“Strange thought so, too,” Steve answered.

“You’ve talked to Strange?” Tony asked.

“Uh, yeah. He came by to talk to me and check up to make sure whatever he did worked, I guess. He split a few minutes before you guys landed,” Steve explained.

He had hoped that the explanation would make sense — at least to someone — but instead everyone looked more confused than before. 

“Strange was here?” Thor asked, loudly.

“Yeah.”

“And just like that he fixed you?” asked Tony incredulously.

Steve shrugged, not really sure what they were expecting from him. “Seems like it.”

Sam snorted lightly. “Well, I guess we can’t complain,” he said, shaking his head. Then, after a pause he asked, “Did he say how he fixed it?”

“Uh yeah. I’m not really sure I understood him, but he said that he was in another dimension and someone knew how to undo it. Apparently he now owes this person, or being, a favor.”

“Oh, that’s smart,” Bruce interjected. “Now Earth’s most powerful sorcerer owes some unknown interdimensional being more powerful than himself a favor… Uh, no offense. I’m really glad to have you back, and I’m not complaining. It’s just concerning is all.”

Steve nodded. In his unlooked for opinion, it was all concerning — favors, interdimensional travel, interdimensional beings, magic, possession, being trapped outside of his own body for five months. Just in general, everything was concerning.

While the others had a bitch session about Strange, Steve’s attention drifted back to the things Strange and Geeta had explained to him. Five months had passed and, while he’d apparently been involved in some of the events that took place, he couldn’t recall a single minute. The last thing he remembered was some asshole burying a knife in his thigh while someone else dragged their blade down his back. Even with the serum, having that many muscles cut at once had made him crumple to one side. The pain still ghosted down his back and thigh even though the wounds had long since healed since to Steve it had been only a few hours ago. Steve fought the urge to lean to one side and limp in response to the remembered pain. He felt keyed up, like he was still crashing from the adrenaline dump from the fight. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught Sam casually bumping into Bucky as a pretext for taking his hand. They walked beside Steve still, Bucky in the middle, but they were well within each other’s personal space. Sam and Bucky, the two most important people in Steve’s life, had always held one another at arm’s length, and seeing them happy together was reassuring. But things had clearly changed. What had been a friendship was clearly something much more. And that thought brought back all of his fears and insecurities from before — he’d been replaced, wasn’t needed, didn’t belong. It was the agony of waking up after the ice but with the addition of having to watch the loss in real time, or something close to real time.

He consciously straightened, which didn’t actually do much for his already alert posture, and steeled himself again for the loss that had come the first time he went through something like this. 

Around Steve the team laughed and joked — brimming with joy and the lightness of the absolution of loss. But even with their boisterous chatter, Steve shut down, walling off the good with the bad to avoid the imminent crushing pain that was coming when his intimate relationships with the both of them ended. 

Before long they were in the locker room and everyone was stripping down and heading for the showers. But Steve hadn’t been in battle. His body and his clothes were clean, and he sat on a bench, alone, and waited.

While the others made their way off, Sam and Bucky hung back. Steve was so lost in thought that he almost didn’t see them approach until they sat next to him, one on either side, towels around their waists. 

“How’re you doing?” Bucky asked.

Steve leaned forward, elbows to knees, mirroring the men on either side of him. “Alright, I guess.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “You guess?”

“Yeah, I mean, everything seems to be fine. Strange gave me some magical exam — waving hands and glowing symbols, I don’t know — but he said everything was restored.”

Sam’s face flashed to anger for a moment, and then settled on a frown. “So you’re all here, but how are you _feeling?_ ”

Steve looked down at the tile floor and stared. What would he tell them? ‘All my worst fears came true? I basically repeated the ice and came back to a changed world’? That seemed dramatic and also nothing that he had any right to burden them with. 

Bucky’s knee bumped against his. “Hey, look. I don’t know what’s got you, but when I first — you know — after DC, when I started remembering. I didn’t really know everything that had happened to me, but I had some ideas. And I mean, a lot of it I’m never going to remember, but knowing the things had to have been done to me, the way I had no idea what was happening, no control, just something that people touched — it’s incredibly violating. It’s terrifying to know that you can be so helpless that your body isn’t really even your own anymore. And if that’s something that’s giving you trouble, I get that. It may take a while. We’re here for you, okay?”

Steve didn’t think he could feel more like shit than he had, but as it turned out, he’d been wrong. Bucky was sitting next to him, baring his soul, sharing some of his most intimate struggles with Steve, and Steve was sitting there concerned about their romantic potential. So to add to feeling out of place and unneeded, he now also felt like a total cad. 

“Steve? You gotta talk to us, man,” Sam prompted.

Steve immediately sat up, feeling like he was being overly dramatic for something so relatively unimportant. “It’s not that, at least not right now. I appreciate the heads up, though, Buck. No, I think I’m just still in shock a bit. The last thing I remember is being attacked and wounded. I’m just trying to process.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it was enough of the truth that he hoped they would accept it for what it was and leave him the hell alone. 

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I bet that’s a helluva shock. Take your time.”

Bucky leaned over, brushing the too-long hairs on the side of Steve’s head behind his ear, and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ll take it as it comes,” he whispered.

Steve nodded, his throat closing up and his chest clenching. “Go ahead and go hit the shower. You smell like shit.”

Bucky punched him playfully in the arm at that and stood, Sam joining him. 

“Yeah, you’re clearly not that damaged,” Sam said with a smile. “We can go get something in the mess, and then we can fill you in on all the shit that’s happened in the last five months.”

Steve nodded and they headed towards the shower area, shucking their towels as they went. Talking about everything that happened actually sounded like a terrible thing, but Steve knew that they had suffered more and longer than anything he had in this ordeal. He figured that the best thing he could do would be to listen to them, let them get their grief off their chests. From what Geeta had told him, they had done everything that they could and more, to the point of emotional fatigue, and even then they hadn’t quit, not until all hope had been lost. Steve couldn’t imagine what that must be like, and he braced himself to do as much as he could to ameliorate their hurts.

*****

Dinner in the mess hall was a lively affair. Sam and Bucky had been relegated to the other side of the table as Nat and Tony had made it clear that they wanted their fair share of time with Steve. Steve had been happy to oblige, mostly because he did love his friends, but also because he didn’t want to bear the constant reminder of his Bucky and Sam being close enough to touch but not to have, not like he wanted.

And it worked out to his advantage. Dinner was happy. He laughed and everyone was all too ready to hug him again and again. The ache in his heart dwindled down to barely glowing embers which were nothing next to the roaring blaze of love from his found family. Death had always been a danger in their profession, but they didn’t dwell on it. Until this. They were forced to dwell and that had made it unbearably clear how deep their love and trust for one another ran, far deeper than all the petty fights they got into would indicate. By the time they went back to the locker room to gather their tac gear — and Steve’s room to gather what little of his things had made it to the Compound from the Tower — Steve felt happier and more at home than he could ever remember having felt. 

The ride back to the Tower took only a half hour or so, and the chatter sustained itself until everyone had deposited their combat gear in the ready room. Then everyone gave him one last hug, before departing to their various rooms for some sleep. Even Nat and Tony were looking a bit tired and Steve could see that the battle earlier in the day had taken a lot out of them. So he was left with Bucky and Sam who helped him carry his meager belongings back to their shared apartment in companionable silence.

Things in the apartment looked mostly the same, though most evidence of Steve’s existence was missing. Sam must have noticed Steve looking because he frowned a little.

“It got harder to look at your stuff every day. I ended up boxing up some of it and putting it on your room. You gotta understand, we were under the impression that you were never coming back. We were just trying to cope,” Sam said guiltily.

Steve shook his head. “No, I get that. When my ma died I did something similar. It’s hard.”  
Sam and Bucky nodded, signalling their agreement, but it was different when the person who got packed away was dead and never had to face it. Instead Steve was face to face with their attempts to excise him from their lives, coffee cup by coffee cup, until they could get on with their lives. He was the one they had tried to let go of. So they might get that it was hard, but all the same Steve didn’t think that they really understood what he was feeling. 

“Come on, I’ll get that stuff out of your room and we’ll get you back in there,” Sam offered, bumping Bucky.

The two of them set off down the hall and after a minute Steve heard the linen closet door open. The rattle of what sounded like ceramic mugs sounded as the boxes scuffed against the floor, and then the door shut, Bucky reappearing shortly thereafter.

“Sam’s remaking your bed. It was little dusty after all this time,” he explained, picking up Steve’s duffle. Steve grabbed the boxes and followed him. 

Steve didn’t really want to unpack at that exact moment but he didn’t know what to do, so he simply set his things down and stared out the window. 

“Steve, if you wanna go to bed, I get that. It’s been a helluva day. But if you’re alright, we need to talk,” Sam said as he put the last pillowcase on.

They hadn’t had a moment to themselves, just the three of them, since the locker room. And this was it: the moment where they told Steve about how things had changed and he found out for sure that he was no longer necessary, because Steve knew that they wouldn’t leave him to just figure it out on his own. They were nothing if not honest with him.

“Yeah, lemme hit the head,” Steve answered as he turned and went out into the hall to find the bathroom.

“We’ll be in the living room,” Sam called after him.

Steve nodded and made his way into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind him, though he knew he was being ridiculous as soon as he did it. Even so, Steve felt like he needed a minute to steel himself for this. But he knew that the real reason behind his temporary hiding in the bathroom was that he just wanted to delay it all. He wanted to postpone the inevitable. 

But even hiding in the bathroom could only last so long before someone came knocking. He’d rather go face the music of his own accord. At least he would have his dignity left. He went ahead and took a piss and washed his hands since he was in the bathroom, after all. Then he made his way to join them on the sofa. 

Of course they had left him he middle spot on the sofa, right between the both of them where he had no escape. Solemnly, he sat.

“Thanks for giving us a minute. I know today has been a lot,” Sam said.

“It was hard, when you, when you went away like that. We hoped for so long, but after the mission to Sokovia, we just ran out of steam. We’d been grasping at straws for hope up until then anyway, and that was just the last of it,” Bucky said, and then after a pause he continued. “Sam and I, we both had a lot of trouble. I felt guilty for not getting to you sooner. Sam had Riley to hurt him. And then there was you being a mindless puppet that people had to move around and touch, and all the while you were empty and it was like watching the Soldier, seeing what I went through. Steve, we both had a really bad time.”

Steve swallowed hard. Bucky had gone through so much therapy when they had brought him in after DC, and the first year had been brutal on a daily basis without exception. The next year had been livable. Only this past year had really been something called life, and even then it was fraught with stumbling blocks like PTSD and all the symptoms that came with that. For Bucky to call what they went through “bad” meant it was on par with the first year. That was something Steve didn’t want to consider or accept.

“I’m not saying this to blame you, Steve,” Bucky continued. “I’m just trying to explain. Sam and I, we struggled together and being in it together helped. And then sharing a bed let us get some break from the nightmares. And it all just went from there. My relationship with Sam is the one good thing to come out of this hell that the last five months have been. I know now why you love him.”

Steve felt himself blush. He hadn’t gotten to that point in his relationship with either of them to be bringing that up, but of course that didn’t mean Bucky was wrong.

Bucky chuckled. “Yeah, caught ya. Look, we both still love you, too, Stevie. And we’re glad to have you home. And we were hoping, me and Sammy, that maybe we could work something out with the three of us. You know, a big — whaddya call it, Sam?”

“Polyamorous.”

“Yeah, a big, happy, queer polyamorous relationship. Whatcha think about that?” Bucky asked with smile that was equal parts sauve and scared all at once.

Steve was so busy parsing the smile on Bucky’s face that the words took a minute to sink in. Then, his mouth gaped open and he stared back at Bucky like an idiot.

“I take it by your stunned silence that you think my idea is the best one you’ve ever heard and you accept,” Bucky said, debonair and quite pleased with himself. 

Steve looked over at Sam who sat grinning back. 

“Whaddya say, Steve? I bet we could have a pretty magnificent threesome,” Sam said. 

Steve felt his ears heat and Bucky chuckled. In that moment all his fears and anxieties welled up like a giant ocean wave — it crested and then broke apart. The momentum of his panic fell away, replaced by the lightness of hope and being wanted and belonging.

He choked a little and then coughed out a small, “God yes.”

Sam and Bucky both laughed at the same time and wrapped their arms around him from each side, Steve squished happily in the middle. He held onto each of them at the same time, a bit awkwardly given his position, but he couldn’t think of a happier place to be. 

“You thought we’d replaced you, didn’t you?” Bucky asked.

Steve nodded, unsurprised that Bucky could still read him so clearly. 

“You big idiot. You got yourself all worked up over nothing,” he said with a chuckle. “Come on, let’s take this party to the bedroom.”

Steve pulled back and stared at Bucky, one eyebrow raised. “We’re diving right in, huh?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “He means so we can sleep. We’ve been up since 0300 and we’re tired.” 

“Oh,” Steve muttered, a response that was met with much snickering. But of course now that the idea of sleep had been planted in his head, Steve was feeling pretty tired himself. 

Bucky got up first and tugged on Steve’s hand. He and Sam followed, and before long they were dragging Sam’s mattress into Bucky’s room. Between the two king sized mattresses — they had to throw both mattresses on the floor and drag the frame into the hall for the night because they couldn’t organize everything enough in short order — there was enough space for three large size men to sleep comfortably. 

After that, they all changed into sleep clothes and performed their nightly ablutions. Steve walked into the room just as Bucky wound his arms around Sam’s waist and pulled him close for a kiss. 

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Steve commented and he slid in on the left side of the hilariously large pallet. 

“Better get used to it,” Bucky declared. “Sam’s one of my best guys now. Gotta share and share alike, Stevie.”

“God, shut up,” Sam said playfully. 

Bucky let Sam go and Steve watched them drop into bed beside him. They pulled their respective blankets up and JARVIS turned off the lights. After a few moments of Bucky all curled up alongside Steve, Sam muttered, “Put him in the middle, Mr. Share-And-Share-Alike. I want some Steve, too.”

Bucky grumbled something unintelligible and then crawled over Steve. Then Bucky grabbed Steve by the arm and shoved him to the middle where Sam scooted up beside him. Soon, Steve was hemmed in, unpleasantly warm, but very pleasantly loved. 

Steve hadn’t exactly had a lot of experience in relationships, but he got in the impression that they tended towards complicated at the best of times. But for once, he didn’t worry about how this would work out. The emotional and mental exhaustion of the day certainly played into his uncritical acceptance of the situation, but for the most part, Steve didn’t want to examine his happiness too closely lest it fall apart. Most things in his life had been that way — tenuous at best and broken the rest of the time. So instead of thinking about tomorrow or any other day, Steve closed his eyes and settled his mind, focusing on enjoying the present moment and nothing more. Tomorrow, and tomorrow’s worries, would come either way, and it was best to face them rested.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation available in hover text and in the endnotes for my mobile-user friends.

“Uncle Steve! Uncle Steve!” 

Steve leapt over a low retaining wall that encircled a flower bed at the foot of a tree, clearing the bed completely and landing on the other side. The frisbee connected with his hand moments before his feet touched the ground and Jaklynn cheered.

“Woo! That’s another point for my team,” she shouted to Sam who stood glaring at Steve and Bucky.

Sam, Makayla, and Sarah’s husband, Jermaine, stood on the other side of the field. Makalya didn’t seem too put out, but Jermaine and Sam were exchanging glances. 

“You still think we can beat two supersoldiers just because I’m an Avenger and you were a quarterback at Albany?” Sam asked.

“Man, shut up. I know, alright? Damn, them boys can run,” Jermaine complained.

“They can run, and jump, and vault, and carry, and lift, and-”

“Dude, alright, I get it. Your boys are strong. Just because you fucking them don’t mean you gotta let them win though.”

Sam glanced off at Makalya who was already halfway across the field and hopefully out of earshot. 

“You’re just jealous,” Sam replied.

Jermaine smiled and laughed. “Jealous my knees are starting to wear out maybe. I wanna heal like they do.”

“That’s the damn truth,” agreed Sam.

As they crossed the field at a leisurely pace, Steve and Bucky were taking turns lifting the girls face first into a tree. 

“Can you see the nest?” Bucky asked.

“I see it!” squealed Makayla and Jaklynn, almost in unison.

“Look! Their little mouths are open! I can hear them peeping!” Jaklynn said with a voice that Sam had also heard her use for babies and kittens.

Once their delighted observations slowed down to a pace resembling normal human speech, Bucky and Steve carefully lowered them to the ground.

“Uncle Steve says that we can make bowls,” announced Makalya. “He told me that at lunch.”

“Me too,” interjected Jaklynn.

“He said that if we wanted, we could go to his apartment in the Stark Tower and try,” Makayla continued, clearly trying to goad her father in the desired direction.

“Well, actually you Uncles Sam and Bucky taught me, and they’re much better than I am,” Steve said very matter-of-factly. “I bet we could all go try together.”

Both girls started screaming and bouncing in place and Bucky laughed. There weren’t many moments where Bucky was so open and unguarded, allowing himself to laugh and be merry about something in front of someone outside of their small three-person world. But Sam had watched him over the past year, as he and Bucky had gotten to know them, and the difference had been nothing short of miraculous. 

Of course, Bucky wasn’t the only person who’d changed. There was also Steve. Other than going to Bucky’s house and seeing his mom when she was home on her rare days off from work, Steve had never really had a family. At least, that’s the impression that Sam got. But between Steve’s manners and his willingness to run headlong into any situation regardless of preparedness, he’d managed to make family something that worked for him. 

Sam wasn’t going to admit it, but the first time he’d heard them calling Darlene “mama,” and then calling Geeta, the Avengers new live-in physician, “amma,” Sam had gotten teary eyed. Every one of them had lost someone — parents, sisters, a brother, a son, a husband, a lover — and Sam saw their lives converge in a way that didn’t take the pain away, but made it easier to bear. 

They walked across the field and down the street to the nearest subway station. They were only a couple of stops from the Tower and lunch and the gigantic mess that throwing pottery with his nieces — their nieces — would be. And then they would clean up and grab some take-out because Steve had asked if they could go home for the weekend. 

Home.

Maybe before, Steve and Bucky, and even Sam, had referred to the Tower as home. Just in conversation. But that had definitely changed. It was the apartment or the Tower now. It was a living situation. But home was Darlene’s house where Geeta and Sarah were talking together and having some quiet time. Once Sam and the others got back to the house, they would eat dinner and play scrabble until the girls fell asleep on the sofa and had to be carted upstairs to the guest room. And they would stay until all the beers had been drunk and say their goodbyes to Sam’s family, taking Geeta and heading back to the Tower. 

It wasn’t perfect, not by far. They still had messy, dangerous lives, and the fallout from their pasts brought bad days and sometimes fights. But Sam knew that it was alright, because for the first time since he’d met either of them, they smiled and laughed without hesitation, even if sometimes it only came in snippets here and there. 

They walked Geeta to her apartment and hugged her goodnight before going on to their place. 

“How tired are you?” Sam asked with a telling smirk as he kicked off his shoes.

“Not that tired,” Bucky replied with a grin of his own.

Steve smiled, too, though he still blushed. “Is féidir liom dul gach oíche,” he replied, the Irish rolling of his tongue with the ease and skill of long hours of practice. 

“Well, then,” Bucky said, a lecherous grin curving his mouth. “I guess we’d better get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is féidir liom dul gach oíche\- I can go all night


End file.
